


look at me (with your eyes closed)

by maderilien



Series: Binary Sun Melancholy [2]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Father-Son Relationship, Friends to Enemies to Lovers, Fusion of Star Wars Legends and Disney Canon, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Secret Identity, Slow Burn, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:33:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 90,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27858386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maderilien/pseuds/maderilien
Summary: Following the stranger's tip, Din Djarin and his growing party embark on a quest that will take them from one side of the Outer Rim to the other.It all comes down to family in the end.
Relationships: Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Din Djarin, Din Djarin/Boba Fett
Series: Binary Sun Melancholy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019524
Comments: 412
Kudos: 654





	1. Still Waters, Deep Waters I

**Author's Note:**

> As promised (and as dreamed of by me for the past month), a proper story for these two bucket-heads! I'm about 1/3 done with the draft but after episode 6 I *had* to polish the beginning and start posting. 
> 
> This story picks up right after the previous part in the series.
> 
> Many thanks to my girlfriend Roxi, to my best friend Livia, and to Abigail, who have encouraged me and dealt with my incessant yelling about Mandalorians. An extra tight hug to Abigail for lending me her eyes and betaing this! If you're a fan of The Untamed, check out her amazing stuff> [Emrysian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emrysian/pseuds/Emrysian/works)
> 
> Enjoy! :D

Razor Crest is a small ship. It is old, built well before the Galactic Empire rose to power. From planet to planet, this patched up husk of metal has served him as vehicle, as defense, and as home—one constant in the vastness of the universe. Living as a bounty hunter, and a Mandalorian one at that, Din Djarin has grown to center himself around his ship and work with it in perfect attunement.

Out of all the passengers he’s had before, most were frozen in carbonite and spent the entire ride to the Guild in the cargo bay, gathering dust. Their presence on the ship has always been minimal. 

For a long time it’s been just him and his ship, hunting down targets across the Outer Rim and making enough credits that the foundlings had proper food and clothes on their back.

When the child entered his life, Din found himself at a bit of a loss.

Still, an adult man and a tiny green blob fit well within the confines of Razor Crest. While the ship could, in its prime, transport an entire platoon, Din has filled it with items and fitted its interior to suit his vastly different needs. It was easy to craft a space for the child: a simple hammock hung above Din’s sleeping quarters, so that it could stay close at its most vulnerable.

All in all, he adapted well to its presence.

_Two_ adult men and a tiny green blob? Well, that’s where the problem starts.

***

The stranger isn’t a regular passenger, even though he acts like one. He doesn’t talk much, he keeps to himself, and, if it weren’t for him watching over the child while Din is busy flying the ship, he might as well fade into the background. By all accounts, Din shouldn’t have any issues with him, yet he finds the man’s presence to be frustrating. 

A particular uncertainty hovers around the stranger. He holds himself with dignity, but doesn’t reach out. His eyes scan the inside of Razor Crest without a hint of subtlety, yet he says nothing and instead waits for Din to start the conversation.

Once they take off from Mos Eisley, Din’s mind clears. As much as the human part of him takes comfort in having solid ground underneath his feet, there is little else beside zero gravity that can set him at ease.

Din fiddles with the board controls, then asks, one hand over the navigation panel, “Where are we headed?”

“The Rezi system in the Bajic sector,” says the stranger. “Sullivan Spaceport on planet Mizi, if I remember correctly.”

“What are we looking for?”

The man smiles then, a tight-lipped smile which rather alarms Din. More often than not, when his guts tell him something more might be at play, things end up proving him right eventually.

“Several Mandalorians disappeared in that space region. I hope we can figure out what happened to them.” Perhaps noticing some doubt on Din’s face, he adds, “I’ve heard my fair share of rumours on Tatooine.”

“Why do you need to come with me? You insisted quite adamantly to join us.” Din glances at the stranger from the corner of his eyes, trying to gauge his reaction.

The man shrugs. “I’ve had enough sand to last for a lifetime. This seemed like a cheap ride away from it all.”

It’s true that Razor Crest is far from a luxury spaceship, perhaps even close to falling apart sometimes, but to be called a ‘cheap ride’ ruffles Din’s feathers a little. He types the coordinates for the star system firmly, disgruntled at the insult. There are plenty of sectors between Tatooine and Mizi, but the fuel should last them long enough to make the journey directly. Din looks over the calculated trajectory, checks the numbers twice, then once the destination is set, he turns to the stranger.

He’s watching the other passenger seat, completely absorbed. Din follows his line of sight and finds the child playing with its favourite control knob, twisting it around in its hands like it is the height of entertainment.

When the child notices it is being watched by such a large audience, it startles and drops the ball.

All three of them look at it in dismay as it rolls between two plates on the floor.

“Actually,” the stranger begins, voiced laced with hesitation, “I’m interested in the case myself.”

Din can’t help it—he lets out a sharp laugh. “You seemed rather indifferent to Mandalorians earlier, except when it came to pawning off our belongings.”

“I have reason to believe something of mine was stolen by this person, group—whatever they are,” the man replies evenly, not rising to the bait at all.

“I see,” Din says but doesn’t, not really. He’s already planned on keeping a close eye on the passenger, so this merely serves as confirmation he’s within his rights to do so.

A soft thud catches both of their attention: the child jumps down and kneels next to the little hole where the ball fell through. Its hand is tiny enough to fit through the initial gap, but it doesn’t seem to be able to reach it.

Din picks the child up, places it back in the chair and ties one of the straps across its chest. “Play with this,” he says and hands it another detachable part from the control board. “I’ll help you get the ball later. Don’t drop this one.”

“I have the feeling you’d dismantle the entire ship to find a toy for that creature,” says the stranger.

“Don’t call it a creature.”

The stranger folds his arms. “Do _you_ know what it is, then?”

Din doesn’t have a good answer to this question. He stares at the child blankly, trying to read the name of its species in the wrinkles of its forehead.

“What do you call it?” the stranger insists.

“Kid, sometimes?” Din doesn’t like where this is going.

“Is it a pet? That’s like keeping a loth-cat and naming it Cat.”

“I can hear the grin in your voice. Cut it out,” Din grumbles. Still, as he looks to the child, he wonders if it ever had a name. What its parents called it. If they got to hold in their arms before the child was involved in this whole mess. If they’re still out there, somewhere, mourning it. If the child could ever tell him, when it learns how to speak, ‘This is who I am.’

The stranger crouches down by the passenger seat and stares down at the ridge. He has even less success than the child at retrieving the ball.

“What do I call _you?”_ Din asks, staring down at the back of his head.

“I don’t have a name,” the man replies neutrally.

“Alright, Man with No Name, if you want to keep the mystery up, suit yourself.”

***

In the end, their fuel lasts just enough to get them to Mizi. 

A multitude of ships orbit the planet and many more are in transit, proving just how central Mizi is for the local economy. Din joins the descending vehicles after locking in on their destination and prepares for the landing. Behind him, the two passengers are strapped in, each in their own chair: the stranger sits in total silence to his left, whereas the child is cooing excitedly to Din’s right.

A thin, weary voice contacts them from the port comms tower, directing Razor Crest to a specific landing zone. After that, things proceed smoothly. The air space is busy, but not unmanageable, and Din pilots the ship with ease, familiar with all of its particularities.

Being back on solid ground doesn’t sit well with him; it is harder to get away from assailants while on foot, and seeing the crowds littering the streets right outside the hangar, he feels wearier by the second.

The stranger exits Razor Crest with a noticeable difference in enthusiasm. He surveys the area with his hands on his hips, taking advantage of the slight high ground the landing ramp is offering him. The child’s pod floats down the pad by his side and stops next to Din millimeters before bumping into him.

The hangar doors are wide open, revealing a large street bustling with aliens. Nearby, other ships are in the process of landing, the noise of their combined engines overpowering the chatter from the streets. Din pays the mechanic, a dark green rodian, then takes his growing envoy and heads deeper into the space port. 

Brick and metal dominate the area, coming together in a mismatched clash of styles, clearly attesting to the high migrant populace on the planet. On ground level, there seems to be a stall every other step down the road. Higher up, pipes and cables link the blocks together like bridges in the sky.

The stranger hovers closer to Din once they get swallowed by the crowd. "Let's find where the people gather in this place," he whispers, head bent low. "Two fellas on the third floor to our left seem to have noticed your sparkling attire already."

Din doesn't quite sigh, but it is a close thing. 

They follow the influx of people all the way to a plaza, a triangular space wide enough that the surrounding buildings do not feel oppressive. More cables criss cross above it like a thin web formed by a gigantic spider and bear the banners of local merchants, tall but narrow fabrics painted with the vendors’ logos and special offers.

"Is there a reason the kid couldn't stay on the ship?" The stranger's voice holds no real bite in it, only some tiredness from the extra life they have to keep watch for.

Din understands how a mission can be affected by this but he doesn't care. "I am not leaving its side."

"As you wish. I'm not taking any bullets for it, though," the man replies.

Din furrows his brows. "I never asked you to. I am here and I am enough."

A sorrowful look passes over the stranger's face. Had Din not already been looking at him, he wouldn't have noticed any change, so swiftly it vanishes. A more collected, pensiveness replaces it when the man looks down at the pod. "Lucky kid."

They split up not too long after that in an attempt at covering more ground. The stranger had his back once, when Din hadn't even known to trust in him. It comes harder to do so now, a second time, but he’s had to rely on worse people in his life.

Din heads to one corner of the plaza, where a narrower alley branches off from the larger boulevard. Speeders woosh past them on the main artery at speeds far greater than the presence of the crowd should allow. He keeps a hand on the child’s cradle as they are plunged into the penumbra of the alley.

Groups of people pass them by: humans, a handful of bothans, even two wookiees see to their business on this faraway planet. The primal resource found here is a type of ore, and the deeper Din walks into the port, the more workers fill the streets, all in ghastly orange clothing and mining gear. Each of them keeps Din on his toes, a possible New Republican officer—and he's had enough of those.

Several intersecting side streets later, Din finally spots a bar. Right across from them hangs an old, chipped sign with only a few letters still readable in its name.

On edge, Din checks the perimeter. Several heat signatures fill his helmet feed, most of them sitting down at tables inside the bar. On the street, a twi'lek clad in a blue poncho is walking away from them quickly, the sound of their heels echoing loudly in the intersection.

With one hand close to his blaster and the other holding onto the pod, he walks up to the bar and pushes past the front door confidently. No shots ring out behind him, to his great relief. Instead, several high pitched bells chime incessantly as the door disturbs them. 

Smoke and loud chatter assault his senses. 

At first sight it feels like an oddly cramped room, but once his eyes adjust, he realizes the tables go pretty far back into the building and the illusion is maintained only by the low ceiling and the dim light. 

As he passes them by, a couple of reptilian patrons turn to look at him. Reflected by his armour, more light falls on their faces and shines in their eyes strangely. 

It's this gleam of greed that tells Din this must be the right place to investigate matters.

To the left side of the entrance, the bar is set up along the wall, countless bottles on display behind the counter. The bartender, a fat woman with blemished skin and wearing a threadbare apron, notices him quickly and watches him with apprehension as he approaches.

Din pulls out a handful of unmarked credits from his pouch and drops them on the counter. "Do you have frogs?" he asks.

She lifts one eyebrow in confusion.

"Guess not. Warm stew, please, for the little one," he nods toward the kid.

She accepts the money without giving back any change, then sets about preparing the request. He remains by the counter, sitting on the chair closest to the wall, the child’s cradle nestled between him and the yellowing wallpaper. 

Soon, a tiny ceramic bowl filled with thick red liquid is placed in front of him; it gives off a mouth-watering scent, making Din himself feel hungry from the sensation alone, even as filtered as it is by his helmet. He nods in thanks, hoists the child on his knee, and supports its back as it struggles to reach the bowl, drawn in by the food.

“I’m looking for other Mandalorians,” Din says, after a while.

“Mm, you’ll be looking for some time,” the woman responds, revealing a gruff voice damaged by years of smoking. “Haven’t seen one in months.”

“Do you remember anything about them?”

The bartender scoffs. “Do I look like a karking travel droid to you?”

Spooked by her raised voice, the child cowers underneath the till. Din places a comforting hand over its back as he turns to glare at the lady.

“There is one place,” she rasps thoughtfully. “A warehouse on the 44th street. I hear they frequent it, when they come by our spaceport.”

Begrudgingly, Din hands her a couple more credits.

***

The doorbell rings. Moments later, none other than the stranger from Tatooine takes a seat at the counter, a few seats in-between him and Din. He pulls out a few credits, but doesn't let them down, only holds them in his hand enough for the bartender to see he means business.

Sensing profit, the bartender gravitates to him at once.

"What can I get ya?" she drawls.

On his part, Din’s surprise at seeing him is quiet and masked by beskar. He listens to their conversation while busying himself with the child, trying to coax it out of hiding with a few gentle words and helps it finish the bowl of stew.

"I'm looking for uhh, a job that pays well," the stranger says quietly. “A nikto sent me here.”

"Ah," the bartender leans back and takes hold of a glass. She starts drying it as she considers her answer, though her eyes are not as trained as her nonchalant body: Din catches her looking his way for a fraction of a second before she focuses back on the stranger. "How capable are you?"

The man scoffs. "Very."

"Mhm, I hear that all the time. A, a—don't lose your temper, mister!” She holds out one placating hand in between them. “I may have something for you."

The child whimpers, distracting Din from the conversation. It must recognize the stranger's voice, because it reaches out with one tiny little hand. Din catches it in his own hand and twists the kid around so that they are looking at each other directly. He gives it a _look,_ before he deposits it back in the cradle.

The stranger drops some credits on the counter and pushes them toward her. She fills the dry glass with spotchka and slides it toward him in exchange.

"There should be a free table in the back," the bartender says.

The stranger stands, glass in hand, and inclines his head in thanks. "Pleasure doing business with you, ma'am."

***

Back on the streets, Din takes a different route to the hangars, one that involves less shady backstreets and more traffic, both mechanized and pedestal. He and the kid stick close to the side of the buildings, where there is plenty to see: more food—both cooked and raw vegetables—and candy is being sold for ten credits a handful. The kid has its pod open, which is really Din's mistake: it sees the hard sugar sparkling in the sun and whines until Din's pouch becomes lighter and the kid's pod ends up floating closer to the ground than it did before.

He keeps an eye out for trouble as more and more natives and migrants pass them on the sidewalk, but his mind isn't fully on the task. Instead, he wonders about the mysterious man's intentions again.

The way he slid into his seat at the bar without even glancing at Din, not betraying their allegiance at all despite being the one with his face visible for all to see—it spoke of experience. A mastery of subterfuge and intel gathering, perhaps.

Din's ways of reaching out toward other Mandalorians are very obviously hindered by his attire and adherence to said Tribe, but he realizes now that temporarily travelling with this man might come to Din's advantage.

In the plaza, Din becomes aware of being followed. Without losing a beat, he circles the area and spends a couple of hours perusing the wares on display. He knows the stranger must be in the middle of business about now, or at least hopes so, and it allows Din to lose the pursuers in the crowd without rushing it.

Once the coast is clear, he returns to Razor Credit.

As soon as the child is deposited on the floor, it scampers to the hole in the boards, looking for the toy.

Next, the candy is unloaded in a metal box and quickly hidden away before the kid takes notice of it. Unfortunately, having a kid like this womp rat around, it means that even if Din makes use of the considerable height difference between them, this does not amount to anything if it _really_ wants to get the candy. Whatever the kid's magic actually is, it has made a creative man out of Din.

Outwitting a child leaves one more drained than one would expect.

***

The stranger saunters in sometime before nightfall, entirely too pleased with himself.

Din would be annoyed if it didn't hint at a successful operation on the man's part.

"You know, for all their obvious sneaking around, it was actually hard to reach the guy in charge," he comments. A piece of fabric is thrown over the upper half of his body, dark green with a couple of faded yellow lines adorning the edges. The attention to the new piece of attire does not go unnoticed: "I wanted to blend in a bit. It's neat, though, isn't it?"

Din looks back up at his face, mildly embarrassed at getting caught staring. "What's the job?"

"Straight to business… okay." The stranger folds his new poncho and places it on top of a crate. "Some local bandits interested in Mandalorian armour. Doesn't matter what happens to the person wearing it."

"Beskar is in high demand. This means nothing to me," Din says.

The stranger nods. "You're right, but they've already tracked down some of your brethren.”

“Are these the thieves you’re looking for?”

“Not actually, but I have a hunch this group is working for them. They’re not selling the beskar on the black market, but instead shipping it off to someone in particular.”

Din narrows his eyes. As he leans against the side of the cockpit, he entertains the many possibilities of this person's identity. An imperial? A syndicate leader? Perhaps merely an outrageously rich noble looking to diversify their collection.

"Do you think we should trace that person?" 

"Exactly!” the stranger nods, visibly pleased with the suggestion. "We figure out how the collector tracks Mandalorians and then use that intel ourselves. Takes the randomness out of it, doesn't it?"

"If it works…" Din says, but he cannot deny that the plan sounds decent enough. Definitely more than he had before, travelling from system to system based on rumours and hearsay.

"Of course it will work, Mando,” the stranger beams. “Aren't you a bounty hunter? Consider this your new target."

"Do you have a plan?"

"Well… it depends on how comfortable you are with being handcuffed around me," the stranger says gaudily, looking at him with mirth on his face.

Annoyed, Din lets out a sigh. "I must say whenever you open your mouth I reconsider my stance."

"The plan _is,_ we stage a confrontation, I catch you with some of their people's help, then we take you to the manager on-world and we make our move."

That's not too bad, considering what other situations Din's been in before. He might get to see if the stranger is as good as he claims in close quarters combat too.

"The child has to stay here,” the stranger adds.

Currently, said child is sitting in the pilot's seat, leaning against the backrest lazily. Din peers at it from above and it looks back up with its big eyes as black as the void between stars.

"Can I leave you here for a few hours? Will you be good?" he asks, staring at it intently. Its inky eyes feel all-seeing when it stands still and doesn't blink. "You're fifty now, I want to trust you with the well-being of this ship."

The child follows his movement as he gestures to the hull and the screen, and regards Razor Crest as if it hasn't seen it before.

"Yes, this ship. You sleep here."

A creeping warmth engulfs Din’s neck and face once he remembers he has company. He turns to look at the stranger for a second, finds him watching them with one eyebrow raised, so he straightens his back slowly and stands to a side, serious once more.

"It'll be fine. They didn't strike me as particularly ferocious warriors," the man says. "Between the two of us, we'll make quick work of them. Sure could use some armour, though."

If he's hinting at what Din thinks he's hinting, then he can forget about it. The Mandalorian armour from Mos Pelgo will have to be returned to an Armourer—until then, nobody has any right to wear it.

However, the lack of armour on the stranger's part _is_ concerning, so Din beckons him down the ladder. Next to his weapon storage he has some equipment from the latest bounties before the child came into his life, pieces which Din forgot to sell or throw out in the meantime.

"Pick anything that suits you. As for weapons, the ammunition is here." Din inputs the code on the device and opens the sliding door. "Or other guns, if yours aren't good enough."

The Man with No Name hums appreciatively at the display of guns, blasters, and slugthrowers.

"Decent loadout," he remarks lightly, taking out one of the older model pistols and turning it around in his hands. "I haven't seen one of these in a while. Good grip. Guess I'll have to shoot them faster than they can shoot me, since only one of us can deflect bullets."

Din says nothing, though there is plenty waiting on the tip of his tongue, ready to spill over like an overflowing river breaking through a dam. To prevent such an outburst, he makes the educated decision to return to the cockpit and instruct the child properly on its ship-keeping duties. 

Tomorrow is crucial in the development of their quest.


	2. Still Waters, Deep Waters II

The Mandalorian is very irritating.

At the same time, Boba Fett has to admit it is also very amusing to watch him fret over Boba’s foreign presence on the ship. Both Mando and the child have clearly not had anyone spend more than a few days in their vicinity, much less someone who intends to stick around for a longer time.

Once he’s done picking weapons from Mando's storage, Boba returns to the blankets waiting for him on the floor in the cockpit. He half regrets the transport he picked to get off that forsaken planet turned out to be such a tiny ship. There is barely enough space for Mando to sleep, let alone a second passenger, but while it is _not_ comfortable, Boba's been in worse places. At least there is no sand sticking to his face when he wakes up.

In the cargo bay, the Mandalorian hid himself in his tiny sleeping area to eat or to breathe without his helmet on—whatever it is that no living being is allowed to see. Boba still wonders about that part, perplexed and full of regret in equal measure. Had his… childhood taken a different path, he would have known a lot more. Would have been _receptive_ to know more.

Alas.

So up he goes, tired.

Nothing could have prepared him for the sight waiting for him in the cockpit.

"Hey!" Boba shouts, striding toward the kid quickly.

One piece of the floorboard is completely removed and lying against the side of the passenger seat, while the kid itself is half buried beneath the carcass, among the wires.

Hearing his shout, it turns around, its big eyes somehow even bigger, pleading innocence.

"How did you…”

Right before Boba's very eyes, the child lifts its hand with its stubby fingers spread and the lost metal ball floats into the air gently, going up, up until it is at his eye-level. Shocked, he stands still and only moves one hand to catch the ball when the child lets it go.

Then, as if nothing unusual just happened, it whines at him and reaches up with both arms.

"You dug that hole yourself, buddy," he grumbles, but does bend down to lift the little green creature out of Razor Crest's innards. 

He places the kid on safer ground, gives it the troublesome toy, then looks at the mess of metal and exposed wiring and sighs.

“No rest for the wicked,” he says mostly to himself, but really, if the kid hears, even better. At least one of them should know not to trust him.

The Mandalorian resurfaces not long after that to pick up the child. Thankfully, Boba has had enough time to fix the floorboard and the ship looks spotless.

It's jarring to see Mando in armour still, head to toe, even on the verge of sleep, but danger always finds a way to spring up on the careless when the ship is docked. With the child in his arms, he regards Boba one last time as Boba is arranging his ‘bed’ on the floor.

“I'll rendezvous with the henchmen early on,” says Boba. “I hear the bartender is in on the whole thing.”

“She sent me to a warehouse.”

“That’s the place. I’ll get us to the boss—the idea of bringing a Mandalorian in alive seemed to be of great interest to them.”

Mandos shoulders rise and drop a millimeter—a certified reaction!

"Good night," the Mandalorian says plainly.

***

Boba has one single vambrace on his right forearm, two pauldrons, and what was once upon a time a chestplate, but which now hangs like a simple sheet of metal down his chest. He throws the green poncho over it all to hide the abysmal equipment he's got on—really, he should ditch it altogether, but going completely unshielded in any situation is suicidal and Boba doesn't want any more brushes with death. Not out of carelessness, at least.

He makes it to the dingy building these thieves call headquarters while it's still dark. Heavy rain washed the spaceport clean overnight, the water reaching deep inside the ore stocks in the warehouses. To a lesser bounty hunter, mayhap one riddled with superstitions, the heavy scent of iron lingering in the air would be foreboding. A bad omen. Boba Fett, who bargained with Lord Vader like he bargained with Gorga the Hutt—fearlessly, confidently, demandingly even—believes in no such tales.

Success comes from preparation and focus. Weapons, armour, physical training, a sound strategy—the key to becoming the top bounty hunter in the galaxy is made by all these little things coming together each mission. That, plus the added touch of a legacy he didn’t ask for weighing him down, heavier with each year passing when he looks in the mirror.

Right now, Boba doesn't have the weapons nor the armour. Arguably he doesn't even have the same physical qualities he had before he danced with death in the desert. Still, his wit has sharpened and his senses have grown keener.

He enters the place confidently, ready for action.

“New guy, took you long enough,” the group leader grunts from the corner of the room, where he's sitting at a table. 

He’s a stout man, not much to his height, but plenty to his muscles, and he sports a horrible scar across the entirety of his left cheek, one that would not be of any help if he went looking for a certain kind of company.

Yesterday, most of Boba’s interactions had been with the scout of the group, a cathar female with sharp eyes and even sharper senses, who waited for him in the back of the bar. To see the leader now bearing such a striking visage, Boba understands why this group has survived so long in the area. More often than not, the fear factor tips the scale in somebody’s favour.

“I got lost twice. My navigator is broken,” Boba lies easily, knowing that at least he looks the part of a pitiful, broke nobody.

A bandit wearing a helmet and an excessive amount of belts laughs. “Do your guns fire at all?”

Boba draws the pistol at his side without hesitation. "Why don't we find out?" he asks, pointing it at the bandit's chest. He turns the safety off—its click wakes everyone in the room.

"Now, now, there's no need to fight. All you scum know is pissing contests," the leader intervenes. He stands up from the table and walks over to them.

Boba excluded, there are five people in the room, each looking more rugged and thirsty for violence than the last.

 _These men took down Mandalorians?_ Boba wonders as he is studying his temporary colleagues. Brute force a-plenty and the desire to maim is ingrained in the wide bloodshot eyes of this lot. Beside the helmeted humanoid, there is a trandoshan, the feline scout, and another human sitting by the table, where he is reassembling his gun.

“Are you certain you can handle a breathing Mando?” Boba asks.

“We've taken three,” the other human of the group boasts, puffing his chest out. His face is scarred and blotched, but his voice is another story, youthful and prideful. “How many have _you_ killed?”

Boba could not say, if only because he has lost count. He huffs; the adrenaline rushing through his veins reminds him of his old days, when nobody could touch him. The story is different now, yet he finds life is too short to keep your mouth shut sometimes, ironically enough.

“Are we talking strictly Mandos or in general?”

The young man breathes in heavily, almost shaking from the anger.

Perhaps there will be an early fight after all.

“I like this guy!” the leader exclaims, clapping a hard hand over Boba's shoulder blade. “Let's get a move on. You'll do just fine, Scarface.”

Oh, there _will_ be one if he is called anything of that sort again.

***

The group moves under the cover of the night's final shadows, sticking close to the corners of streets and blending in with the early crowd when the situation allows it. Boba is walking alongside the young man, who is still reeling from their earlier ribbing, and the trandoshan, at whom Boba prefers not to look too closely for the time being.

(Sentiment resurfaces in the shape of old memories and old friends.)

They spread out in the plaza, mingling in with the crowd of merchants setting up their wares for the day. The annoying young man sticks close to Boba, almost as if he’s keeping an eye out should Boba cross them. He gets one single begrudging point in that regard, though Boba knows he won’t be remembering his face this time tomorrow.

It doesn’t take long after daybreak for the scout to sniff out Mando’s approach. From their vantage point stationed closer to the hangar area, she reports sightings of the Mandalorian heading west from their current location. 

The leader is beyond pleased to hear the news.

"Keep an eye on him, but don't get too close."

"I know, boss. I've done this before," the scout grumbles. "Looks like he is heading toward the warehouses. He doesn't seem to have any guns on him except for a pistol strapped to his waist."

Boba would scoff if that wouldn't raise any questions. _Way to make it easy, Mando._

 _"Tsk,_ I karking hate these Mandos. Get some shiny armour and suddenly they think they're invincible!" The young man looks as mad as he sounds. "I can't wait to take that helmet off and make sure it sees who defeated him before we—"

"Enough chatter. Let's move," says the leader. "Scarface, you’re with the trandoshan. Distract the Mando for a few minutes while our sniper gets in position."

"I'm getting there," the sniper mutters, out of breath.

"Move faster,” the leader rasps out. “Tonool, get your ass in position. With me.”

"Yes, sir!" responds the young man.

Within a minute, their formation reshapes itself: Boba finds himself at the front with the reptilian girl, glad he's actually on the enemy's side this time around and not these people’s. With the flimsy metal strapped to his chest, he wouldn't feel as comfortable were he to face a proper Mandalorian.

The leader joins them from another street, the young man skulking by his side like a large hunk of meat craving release. A heavy shotgun rests in his hands. They all take their positions around the open area in front of the warehouse, hiding behind the stacks of crates left outside.

A few minutes later, Mando rounds the corner and, after observing the surrounding buildings, he spots his destination and walks up to the warehouse.

"Scout?"

"The target is checking a 'gram. He’s got his back to the new guy."

No comms are needed anymore. The reptilian nudges him with her elbow before she springs into action, Boba one step behind her. Their footsteps are muffled by the ground for the most part, alerting Mando of their presence only when it is too late. The reptilian barrels into him with speed, sending both of them to the ground.

Boba sees the leader gaining ground from the other direction, effectively flanking Mando. Tonool approaches them casually.

Mando puts up a good fight. He disarms the reptilian swiftly and uses her gun to shoot her in the leg. In this moment when he is focused on the other adversary, Boba launches himself at Mando and rolls with him on the floor, quickly unsheathing Mando’s pistol and throwing it away.

They trade a few blows. The Mandalorian throws a mean punch, catching Boba in the ribs on his side, where his chestplate connects to the back piece. It drives his breath out of his lungs, but doesn’t stop him from lunging across the gap between them and twisting the Mando’s arm until he has him on the ground again.

It’s been some time since Boba last fought hand to hand, since he prefers weapons and some distance between him and the enemies, but his moves haven’t dulled as much as he’d feared. Mando has more muscle and seems to take each blow like it’s nothing, even though Boba _knows_ where to find the few weaker points of the suit that the beskar doesn’t cover.

Despite the staged skirmish, Boba realizes the Mando isn’t going to just let him win—which makes things all the more exciting.

Mando doesn’t stay down for long. With an ease that comes from years of training and experience, he gets out of the mild hold Boba has him in and, using Boba’s own balance against him, tips him over until Mando is the one hovering above him, one knee holding Boba down on the middle of his chest.

A blaster shot flies overhead, then another hits Mando in the back of the helmet with a high, sharp _ding!_ He grunts, the momentum carrying him lower, bending his head until he almost crashes into Boba’s (entirely unprotected) face.

Boba laughs—or offers as much of a laugh as he can while struggling to breathe—and whispers, “Don’t knock me out just yet.”

Using this distraction, he flips them over and smashes Mando’s helmet into the floor.

Another shot connects with the beskar and ricochets into Boba, tearing apart his poncho and the side of his unprotected arm.

“Get him!” the leader commands from the side, excited about the unfolding events.

Pining Mando down with his entire body weight, he prepares himself for the next course of action. 

Adrenaline floods his veins. The fight was just as demanding as he’d expected, but also much more fun than he ever thought he’d have on a mission. A ‘friendly’ spar with little holding back? He hasn’t had anyone with whom to practice like that in too long.

The young man holds the shotgun leveled at Mando’s helmet, while the scout appears out of nowhere, bringing with her a set of handcuffs. She doesn’t dare come within melee range of Mando, a smart move overall, so she throws the device to Boba and he, with much more glee than he should, wrenches Mando’s hands behind his back and secures his wrists.

Not _too_ roughly, mind, but a little bit. For show.

“Well done, Scarface,” says the leader. “Looks like you weren’t just boasting.”

“What do you want?” Mando grits out convincingly enough.

“Oh, you’ll find out soon enough,” comes the reply from the leader.

Boba helps Mando get back to his feet and remains by his side under the guise of preventing an escape.

A few seconds later, a thin shot rings out, like the sound of paper sheets sliding against each other as the projectile travels through the barrel. Mando jolts forward, breath cut short, the sniper’s stun mine connecting with his back. It sizzles and discharges in his body, and then he falls to the floor bonelessly with a heavy clang.

Once Mando is knocked out, the young man comes close on his other side, gun aimed underneath his chin, tilting Mando’s head backward with the barrel.

“Hey, hey, kid, step away,” Boba warns.

Tonool scoffs. He reaches toward the edge of the helmet, only to hiss in surprise when Boba shoots the ground next to his feet.

“Hands off,” Boba warns. He leans over the Mandalorian defensively, casting his shadow over his helmet.

“Stand back! This is our ticket to higher society,” the group leader barks and nudges his henchman away from the target. “Control yourselves. You—” he looks at Boba intently, clearly satisfied with the mission progress but visibly more on edge than before, now that a living breathing Mandalorian is within their grasp, “—I want a word with you, later. Let’s bring our boss the gift now.”

They reorganize themselves quickly. The scout takes the trandoshan to a clinic before she loses her leg, and Boba and the young man keep the Mandalorian upright between them while the group leader arranges for transport. As soon as the sniper joins them, they stuff Mando in the back of a vehicle and then cram themselves in. The leader stands squished between Boba and the door, frown permanent on his face by now.

“I'm going to buy all the supernova at the bar when we get back,” Tonool exclaims joyfully. “Haven’t had a good one in a while. Maybe even visit those folks in the red light district.”

“Mm, it’s been a few months for sure,” the sniper agrees, nodding. Without the helmet on, the sniper seems to be part of another reptilian race. Relief after a job well done is the first display of emotions they’ve shown all day. A lazy, large smile stretches over their face and they close their eyes as they lean back onto the side of the car. 

Not as relaxed, but justs as happy, the young man agrees wholeheartedly.

“How often do you see these Mandos around here?” Boba asks.

The leader shrugs. “Often enough. Boss gives us a notice now and then.”

“We’re system-based,” the sniper tells him, proud of their work. “If one of them enters this region, we’ll hear about it.”

“This one did come as a surprise, I must admit,” the leader muses and looks at Mando with a calculating look in his eyes. “But thanks to your brilliant idea, we can enter the boss’ graces. I imagine there’s plenty of dirt on other Mandalorians in that bucket-head over there. Are you interested in a more long-term partnership?”

Boba breathes out sharply, almost a scoff. These people couldn’t afford him even if they sold all the beskar they ever acquired.

“As tempting as that sounds, I must decline. I’m passing through. Need some creds.”

The leader claps him over the shoulder heavily. “Well, Scarface, you sure have earned your share this time around.”

***

A couple of hours of driving later, the Mandalorian jolts awake with a gasp. Breathing heavily, he struggles against his restraints and hits the metal panelling of the vehicle. Backed in a corner and surrounded by four armed people, he doesn’t have a good chance of overpowering them.

The leader doesn’t bat an eye toward him. “So good to see you’re awake, Mandalorian! Have a good look around at the people who’ve caught you. We’re almost there.”

Mando remains stoically quiet. Once he gets his bearings, he doesn’t move anymore, and becomes an unnervingly still beskar statue staring at them through the black depths of his visor.

Boba doesn’t look at him too closely, only in passing, dismissively, playing his part to the best of his ability. The kid, on the other hand, keeps taunting the Mando with crude language and boasting about his skills and prowess.

Nevermind that the kid didn’t even participate in the skirmish, but by the eye rolling happening among the rest of the criminals, it seems the insufferable bastard is just Like That. 

Certainly an efficient tactic of wearing one’s opponent down if prisoners are taken.

At their destination, the sniper zaps Mando again with a short, thin stick. It doesn’t knock him out, but leaves him tripping over his own feet when they drag him out of the vehicle.

If they make it out of this in one piece, Boba expects he owes plenty to Mando for this amount of unnecessary abuse.

(Or they could call it a favour and cleanse Mando’s debt to him, paid in [x] times of being electrocuted due to Boba’s bright ideas.)

The place they’ve arrived at is an underground station, part of which is built into the side of an enormous mining pit. Hidden among the rocks at the rim of the pit is an elevating platform. The leader directs them to stand over it while he inputs a few commands on a panel in-between two rocks.

Again Boba and Tonool are holding Mando by the arms, only this time he is less of a dead weight and more of an angry ball of tension, stiff as a board.

During their descent, Boba takes advantage of the cramped space and inconspicuously moves his hand from Mando’s elbow to his wrist, held awkwardly by the handcuffs. He swipes the key through the device, unlocking the mechanism. The two ends of the device still hold his hands together, but applying a bit of pressure should break them apart easily.

Mando is unreadable in his suit of armour. Boba admires him for this, considering the kid’s prattling on the other side of his face must be close to unbearable.

The elevator opens up on the long side of a dimly lit corridor. The leader exits without preamble, familiar with the place and with the people. A guard passes them by and the two exchange a wordless greeting. As they advance, more guards make their presence known: at least five patrolling the corridors, with a handful more talking in a room. 

At the end of the corridor, the leader turns to them and gives Mando a once-over. The beskar shines alluringly in the light, almost as if it’s collecting all the rays around and reflecting them with double the intensity. The sight brings a toothy smile to the leader’s face.

“What a day,” he whispers to his team. “I will speak with the boss; come in when I shout for you.”

“Understood,” the sniper replies dutifully, giving a mock salute. They ready their electrocuting stick again and angle it toward Mando’s helmet, to make sure that he sees the weapon. “Behave and perhaps you won’t have to suffer very much.”

Tonool hears this and snorts.

“I think you should be worrying about that yourself,” Mando growls.

“Are we doing this now, then?” Boba asks. A quick glance behind them shows only one guard in their vicinity right now, but the promise of a swarm lingers.

“What?” The young man snaps his head toward Boba and grimaces.

Boba sighs as he takes out his blaster. “You gloat when the job’s done, not _almost_ done.”

The sniper figures it out first and slashes Mando with their weapon within the second—Mando grunts in pain, but doesn’t let it affect his momentum. He springs free from the handcuffs, grabs the sniper’s wrist in his fist and twists until the weapon clatters to the floor.

Boba shoots the young man point blanc in the chest. The kid hadn’t even drawn his pistol fast enough.

Mando’s struggle with the sniper ends without issues either. The difference in size and physical strength becomes more than obvious when they are facing each other in close quarters. A single right hook is enough to send the sniper flying through the air until they hit the opposite wall head-first and slump down.

During this time, the commotion raised by Boba’s pistol alerts the base of their presence. Guards start piling up on the other end of the corridor and running toward them with their weapons drawn and shooting.

Boba and Mando slide over to safety and regard each other face to face for a second, a silent understanding passing between them. Boba grabs the sniper’s handcannon and throws it toward Mando without another word.

A flurry of projectiles threaten them from the oncoming wave of enemies. The bullets lodge into the wall ahead of the corridor or go right through it, letting more light pass through the holes.

Mando shoots some of the guards in an impressive display of marksmanship, almost one bullet per enemy, but the gun runs out of ammo soon enough.

“I have the fancy gun,” Boba shouts at him, taking out the mini grenade launcher from its holster. “Cover me!”

Mando shows him his empty hands briefly _—’With what?’—_ before shaking his head in silent judgment, and bracing himself for impact. He sidesteps into the corridor, turning on the flamethrower fixed on his vambraces. His armour clinks and clanks from the assault of bullets hitting him, all converging on this new target in sight for everyone to see. The flames catch the first line of the guards, easily setting them on fire and filling the air with the stench of burned meat and hair.

Boba breathes in deeply, takes aim and shoots.

The whole building shudders from the explosion. Dust and powder floods the corridor; it reaches Boba within a couple of seconds and sends him into a coughing fit next to the sniper’s body. From the middle of the action zone come more scuffling noises, the sound of the typical Mandalorian whipcords unleashed from the vambraces, accompanied by groaning and coughing from the unfortunate souls who survived the first blast. More scuffling ensues, then there is only silence.

“You okay?” Boba asks the smoke.

Mando’s silhouette resurfaces from the corridor. He picks up two guns from some of the guards at his feet, checks their magazines, loots the spare ammo on their uniforms, then finally returns Boba’s look.

It is fascinating how a blank, completely unblemished metal helmet can hold so much judgement.

Boba gives him a small, innocent smile in return. 

This is how it is, sometimes, on dangerous missions.

They barrel through the door the group leader went through. It leads to an empty control room, which connects to an office on one of its sides. The door is barred closed.

Mando fiddles with the panel to no avail.

“Boss, I’ve got the Mandalorian you wanted!” Boba yells. “He wants to talk to you eye-to-eye!”

A series of hushed whispers reach them through the wall. Mando kicks the door, but it doesn’t budge.

“I think his patience is running out,” Boba continues, and more quietly, turning to the Mandalorian, he adds, “and so is mine. Mando, step aside.”

Once the door is clear, Boba slides a thin explosive button between its hinges and the wall. He taps on its side to turn it on, then steps back and gestures to Mando to get back.

They walk back out into the corridor at almost a leisure pace. Mando is staring at him emptily again. When the small boom comes from the explosive device, he merely tilts his head a fraction as he maintains eye contact (helmet contact?) with Boba.

Oh, what wouldn’t Boba give right now to have a glimpse at whatever the Mando is thinking!

The space where Boba put the explosive now exists in the shape of a large oval crater. The door is folded onto itself brokenly, as if a metal-armed tank rammed into it and turned it into a broken metal beam instead. Some papers and smoke billow out from the office. One metal panel hangs pathetically on the wall, the circuitry inside letting out furious sparks every couple of seconds.

The voice inside the office is clear now and every inch of terrified that it should be.

“We don’t take them in alive, you kriffing _idiot,”_ (presumably) the boss is yelling with pathos, voice reaching very high pitches. “This is why! This is precisely why!”

Mando steps in first, almighty wearer of beskar that he is. He passes through the crater fearlessly, letting each of his steps to sink well into the debris and intimidate the enemy further. Boba hangs back, preferring to witness the scene from a safer area.

“Who are you supplying?” Mando asks and really? He’s perfected his interrogation voice.

The boss is a nautolan with light green skin full of brown spots and dark lines all over her face and arms. She cowers from Mando and scuttle backward in fear as he advances.

“Someone far above your paygrade!” the nautolan snarls, pulling out a pocket blaster.

Mando tilts his head to the side, observing the act, but showing no other reaction.

The boss’ grip on the blaster is shaky, but they point it at Mando’s breastplate.

“You don’t want to do that,” he tells her, leaning closer to the nautolan.

The alien lets out a shriek and pulls the trigger.

Boba enters the office quickly, driven by curiosity upon hearing the shot. He sidesteps Mando and finds the boss shell-shocked, the blaster dropped at her feet, and above her, on the wall, the mark of the blaster shot ricocheting right above the nautolan’s head.

Mando hauls her up by the meat of her arm, careless of the furniture she bumps into as Mando drags her to a computer screen. He levels the target with a glare, the sort of intense helmet blankness that Mandalorians have learned to convey through their sheer aura. 

The nautolan whimpers pathetically.

While Mando tries to gather some intel, Boba notices a puddle of liquid behind a desk. He follows the trail.

First, splattered on the wall, he sees droplets of blood. Below, a forearm rests limply underneath an overturned chair. _Just_ the forearm.

Boba raises an eyebrow and turns around, taking in the office. Near the door, where the stone wall caved in, more blood pools out from underneath the debris. He looks closer and finds the corpse of the group leader buried there, maimed beyond recognition by the blast.

Well.

One less thing to worry about.

“Come see this,” Mando calls out. He lets the nautolan drop to the floor once Boba is within an arm’s reach, and makes some space for him to reach the computer controls.

A log of items, labeled under “High Quality Ore”, show the transactions happening between the nautolan and someone titled ‘the Collector’. Under the guise of mineral ore, six items of beskar make have passed through this facility en route to the head of this business.

“You were right,” Mando says.

 _Of course I was,_ Boba thinks scathingly, but doesn’t give in to the impulse to be mean. Not after everything Mando went through today.

Mando flips through a few communications and storage reports and says, “I couldn’t find anything else about this ‘Collector’ though.”

“Let me have a look.”

Mando sidesteps the computer entirely. “Go ahead.”

Boba has missed out on a few technological developments while he was on Tatooine the past few years, but fortunately, the devices installed in this mining facility are older than the Empire. He fiddles with the interface for a good minute, going through a few logs. A droid would be of incredible help about now, but even the best bounty hunter in the galaxy has to deal with some issues manually from time to time.

The names stored on the computer aren’t ringing any bells, and beyond the transport of beskar, there isn’t much else of importance. A list comes up of the nautolan’s strike team, displaying the group’s information member by member. He skims through the pages, stopping only on the entry for the trandoshan. She’s not even from the same planet as Bossk.

_What am I doing?_

He shakes his head, trying to dispel the sadness creeping at the edges. Pulling up the files Mando opened earlier, he looks over them more closely.

“These messages are logged in with a Xi’n Niang, confirming the arrival of the goods and their authenticity,” Boba says. “I guess this is our next target.”

Mando is unnervingly silent.

“...unless you aren’t interested in pursuing this further?”

“Such a waste,” Mando says with disappointment dripping from his voice. Boba follows his line of sight and finds him looking at the group leader’s remains. “And all of this because of greed. My family is dead, but so are they now, and for what?”

Not one to ask himself such philosophical questions while out on the field, Boba shrugs. “If it makes you feel better, these people won’t be harvesting any more beskar in this system.”

“There’s always others willing to fill these rancid spots in the world.”

“Let’s wrap this up and then we can discuss the morality of the universe on our way to the ship,” Boba suggests, feeling a bit out of his depth.

Mando remains silent the rest of the time it takes Boba to extract the messages onto a holopad. Before they leave, they tie the nautolan boss with a sturdy cord and leave her in the office, fully facing her dead comrade. If it were up to Boba, things would have ended in a cleaner fashion for the greedy sod, but he discovers Mando has a streak of poetic justice running through his veins. A sliver of vindication, despite the honourable way he holds himself.

At Mando’s request, he wipes out a good portion of the logs, leaving only enough evidence to incriminate the alien, then Boba pings the spaceport officials with a security alert at the mining station.

Long after they return to Razor Crest, the officers should find the nautolan and bring her to justice.

***

Boba drives a four-person hovercar on the way back, glad to have the steering controls at his behest. It lets him casually ignore the grey mood the Mandalorian is in, under the pretense that driving on a moderately circulated road takes way more out of one's focus than one would believe at first.

A simple shiny rock cut into a complex geometrical shape with many facets dangles from a little hook by the edge of the windshield. On the control board, a small photo shows the nautolan and two more aliens leaning against each other, arms thrown around their backs, revealing this car to be the boss'.

The Mandalorian sits in the passenger seat, alert and watching their surroundings carefully. He doesn't say a single word, which lets the pressure build between them all the way to the hangar. 

Boba doesn’t breach the subject either, though he feels awkward waiting for Mando to speak first.

Back at Razor Crest, Mando gets out, rolls his shoulders wearily, then becomes animated as a new thought consumes him. By the way he runs inside the ship at once, Boba can guess what the new worry is: what is the child doing?

The child, it turns out, is surrounded by candy wrappers in the cargo bay, sitting boxed in by a crate of canned food and the breastplate of Boba's armour. It remains sitting when the ramp unfolds, perhaps too sick from eating so much sugar in one go, but its eyes sparkle and lighten up when it sees Mando return.

"Everything appears to be in order," Mando says, crouching down (with a grunt of pain) next to the child. "Have we had any unwanted visitors?"

The child replies with a couple of low cooing sounds, almost like a Coruscanti pigeon bothering people at their windows far too early in the morning.

Boba enters with some unease hanging about him. They got their intel, but not the amount Boba had hoped for. There was no proper mention of Slave I in any of the documents he saw, though the tie in with the beskar collector keeps him hopeful for their next step.

His father's ship before him, Slave I deserves more than to be pawned off from rich bastard to rich bastard. Getting it back will mean a lot of things for Boba, most of all a point of no return. The anonymity he has indulged in for the past years has let him gather his thoughts and rethink his priorities. Who is he without the armour and the ship? Where does reputation take one in the end, especially when one is a bounty hunter? Why does any of this matter?

Seeing this Mandalorian fleeting about with a child in tow hurried his decision making along.

Part of him wishes he could simply steal back his armour, find his ship, and just pick up where he left off—Boba Fett, bounty hunter. But does the world need him anymore? The Empire fell in the time it took him to wrestle with death and come out on top.

Another part of him wants Boba Fett to stay dead.

If he considers this Creed Mando follows, then he doesn't deserve to wear that armour again, though for reasons far greater than the removal of his helmet. He abandoned all that his father taught him in his fury to avenge his death. 

He hated the Jedi, hated the Mandalorians for betraying his father. Hated the Sith out of principle.

Perhaps a pretty neutral stance for a Mandalorian, all things considered.

Boba frowns and halts this train of thought. Without the endless nothingness of Tatooine to water the spring of self reflection, he hoped he'd stay busier. Anchored in the present.

"Candy and frogs, huh?" Mando remarks absently as he gathers the child in his arms and moves it up in the cockpit.

Boba listens to the noises Mando's suit makes as he climbs the ladder, to his heavy footsteps across the floor from the ladder to the pilot's seat. As Boba unloads the guns and armour he borrowed from the ship, he strains to hear the one sided conversation happening upstairs.

Mando's words are unintelligible; only the tone of his voice carries through the metal, hinting at the relief interspersed with exhaustion that the man is feeling. Still, he laughs once, sharp but unmistakably a laugh, and Boba finds it quite funny too, because a little smile appears on his face by reflex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So uhh that last Mando ep, huh?
> 
> This concludes their first quest stop, though there are miles to go yet! I'm not used to writing action, but drafting this story is teaching me a lot. I hope the shots fired in this chapter make sense and carry a sense of excitement. We also get a glimpse of Boba's inner turmoil~
> 
> I don't know if I'll manage to stick to uploading EVERY Saturday but there shouldn't be breaks longer than 10 days, I hope.
> 
> ALSO I have plotted out the entire story the day the Ahsoka episode came out and I have half already written, so this Boba Fett's post-sarlacc situation will NOT line up with what we are presented in the show. This is very heavily S2 Ep 1 Divergent. Idk how he still has his ship in the show, Tatooine seems like the sort of place a good ship would be first to disappear if the owner is a day late LOL


	3. A Fistful of Beskar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you [Abbey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emrysian/) for being so supportive of my project and helping me sort everything out! I love you!

It wouldn't be far fetched to describe it as one single bruise spanning across his entire body. The more time passes since their return to the ship, the harder Din finds it to move without grunting in pain and freezing at sudden movements. The joints of his upper limbs are sore from being handcuffed behind his back for hours, his head is throbbing from all the bullets his helmet deflected, and most of all his ribs and both his flanks are purple from the staged fight between him and the stranger.

The man knew how to fight Mandalorians. Every weak point in Din’s suit, no matter how small, the stranger made sure to exploit as he brought Din even more heavily on the defensive. Din's endurance helped him out a lot, and the fact that this was a fight he was going to lose anyway, but as he thinks about it now, it doesn't sit well with him. To know how to render Mandalorians useless to  _ this _ extent, one needed to have  _ fought _ Mandalorians.

Never a good sign.

Could it be a roundabout warning toward Din that he should watch his back in case the stranger doesn’t accomplish what he’s set out to do? Or perhaps a subtle display of his skill, so that Din sees that the new passenger of Razor Crest knows his way around in the universe.

Dwelling on this matter, Din takes off a part of his suit, most of the beskar, and the cape clasped to his breastplate. If he doesn't get a proper night’s rest, he won't be functioning very well on their upcoming mission and something tells him things are only going to get harder from now on. 

It’s only been an hour since they lifted off the spaceport and have remained in planet Mizi’s orbit, their next destination still unknown. The stranger promised to figure out the coordinates, so Din retreated to his quarters to nurse his injuries.

The thought of their fight makes him aware of his heartbeat, not quite racing, but  _ there. _ If both had been at their best, what would have the outcome been? Din knows nothing about this man, except that he was stranded on Tatooine and friendly with the Tuskens—a good man, then, to be accepted within their circle. What left him there without a ship and without a name?

Even if he asked, he doubts he would get an answer now. More likely a joke than anything, but the mystery of it persists.

The child looks down at him from its hammock, following his movements with its eyes as Din places each segment of the armour at the foot of his sleeping area. The green little thing is quiet, more subdued than usual. Surely the foreign presence on their ship is bothering it as well.

"Do you think he means us harm, kid?" Din asks absently as he starts shrugging off the upper part of his suit. He applies some salve on his sides, where his muscles are the most sore, and sighs in relief at the cool sensation replacing the bruising discomfort. 

The sniper's stun mine shocked him good: a part of his back is still numb and surrounded by sore itchy skin. He cannot reach the spot at all—twisting at the waist is nigh impossible.

For one brief second, he considers asking the kid to help him out, but he knows it to be a futile task. They’d both make a mess.

In these extraordinary circumstances, he doesn’t have to endure the burn until they reach a new port. There is one other person Din could ask for help, as surprising as this notion continues to be.

He frowns, considering it.

It could be a show of trust. They helped and looked after each other. The man did exactly what he said he'd do and they obtained the information they wanted. 

A success, all in all.

Shoulders set, Din goes back up to the cockpit. Before he opens the trapdoor, he knocks on it twice to let the man know he's coming, then (painfully) climbs the rest of the way.

Inside it’s dark. 

Only one of the control board screens is lit up, near the pilot’s seat, and the holopad is on, throwing its fuzzy green light over the surrounding panels. A dark silhouette blocks part of the light: the stranger is bent over the screen, tapping away on the keys with great intent.

Without turning around, the man asks, "Did you forget something?"

"No. I need your help," Din says quietly. The child should be asleep by now and he doesn't want to disturb it.

As the stranger turns around, the light briefly shows his cheeky grin plastered all over his face. "Trouble sleeping? Would you like a bedtime story?"

"I have a wound on my back that I can't reach," Din says, ignoring the goading. It's becoming easier to do so, especially when it is expected.

Din reaches to the light switch and bathes the cockpit in brighter light.

The stranger frowns at the intensity of the beam, then takes a double take upon noticing he is out of his body armour.

"No, it is not grafted to my skin," Din mutters.

"I didn't say anything!"

"It was clear on your face. Here—" he hands the stranger the medkit without another word, then sits down on a nearby crate, facing the wall. Awkwardly, not quite regretting his decision (yet), he removes part of his undershirt, barely suppressing a wince.

"Oh, wow," the stranger breathes out.

"What?"

"You're not a good fighter, are you?"

Din bristles and tries to twist around to give him a piece of his mind, but his muscles flare in pain and freeze him on the spot.

A cold touch on his shoulder halts his movements further, the stranger’s hands resting against his skin casually.

"That was badly worded," the stranger says, "I apologize. You haven't fought much since you got that armour, have you? It doesn’t make you invincible."

It’s true it hasn’t been very long. Certainly not long enough for Din’s mentors on Nevarro to impart more of their wisdom on handling beskar.

"There's been several attempts at taking my beskar," Din responds. "I am still here."

"I don't doubt that! You held your ground well. Still." One hand moves in between his shoulder blades, and the other lower, to his right side, where its simple presence makes Din inhale and shy away. "You'll be feeling these bruises for a bit, Mando."

"I wasn't fighting with my entire arsenal," Din argues half heartedly.

The hands linger on his shoulders, no longer as cool as the first touch. They tighten over his trapezoid muscles for a fleeting second as the stranger leans down and whispers, "Neither was I."

Standing back up, he goes on, "Do you have any sort of bacta spray in here?"

"The red can should have some left," Din replies hoarsely, aware of the way his throat feels tight all of a sudden. The slight brush of the man's breath over the side of his neck persists long after he put more distance between them.

There is some rustling, then the red can in question is found, shaked briefly, and applied over the electrical wound. Din hisses in surprise and discomfort at the initial sensation, but it only takes a minute for the bacta to take effect and alleviate the most bothersome of the symptoms.

"Any other injuries your most faithful nurse has to look over?"

Several, in fact, but all minor abrasions he can take care of himself. The proximity between them makes him far too aware of himself, and though the wound is no longer bothering him as much, a different sort of discomfort settles over him, like the stranger can see far more than the scars on his back. Perhaps this was a mistake after all.

"This is enough. Thanks," he says quickly, half-strained, as he puts his shirt back on. Uncomfortably warm around the neck, he looks around the cockpit, desperate to latch onto another topic of conversation. He sees the holopad and nods to it at once: "Have you decoded the message?"

With a sigh, the man heads back toward the control board. "Almost, but it’s not precisely what we were looking for. I’m combing through the rest of the data now. There's some encrypted files I haven't opened yet." 

"Anything on our next target?"

"Nothing on Xi'n Niang herself, but there is one transcript that stood out," he says, beckoning Din closer with his hand. "Another group has some beskar and they arranged an exchange with the nautolan. The meeting place is in the Sharlissia system, one sector over, in two days’ time."

"That's worth a shot," Din says.

The message in question comes up, merely a few lines written in code, which the stranger translates with the use of Razor Crest's system. A place and the promise of 'strong, reliable alloys' replaces the symbols—not much to go on, but Din has had harder tracking jobs. On the off-chance this might provide more intel on the Collector’s organization, then Din will gladly travel to Sharlissia, especially if it means the potential retrieval of more beskar.

"Thought you'd like it," the stranger says with a small smile. "If we go there fast enough maybe we can intercept them."

***

Din is intimately familiar with the rumbling of Razor Crest's engines, with the way it thrums as it travels in hyperdrive. In a way, it feels like a mechanical lullaby that could easily put him to sleep if he is tired enough for it. The soft snoring of the child joins the engines. It should be disruptive—and it  _ was, _ at first—but now Din takes comfort in hearing the child sleep so comfortably next to him. There is safety here, and warmth, and—whatever Din remembers from sleeping next to his mother in the same bed—he hopes there is some of that too.

Listening to ships flying overhead in the dead of the night, before the commercial crafts were replaced by warships, feeling the heat of summer well after sundown, simmering almost, joined by the fragrance of the night-blooming flowers hanging outside their window, form the roof down to the porch—these are times long past, ones he still holds dear.

If he thinks of his parents, his first parents, his heart aches with longing. It is a dull pain, one that has been abraded by three decades’ worth of time, but one he knows will stay with him for as long as he is alive in this universe.

When they come out of the hyperdrive, Din is not the only one who got some rest. The child is brimming with energy, playful and a tripping hazard like it’s rarely been before—it keeps tugging on the ends of Din’s cape, alternating between leaning on the cloth and wrestling with it like it is a big, bad monster.

As mischievous (or rather, bothersome) as the child, from his chair on Din’s left, the stranger reaches down to grasp the cape midway down its length and lifts it so that the edge barely touches the child's head. He moves it around, letting the child touch it and grab it, then pulling it out of the child’s reach so that it has to jump to get it back.

Din hears all this scuffling behind him and barely represses a sigh.

"It really is like a Loth cat," the stranger exclaims happily.

"It's a  _ child," _ Din says, contrived. Not only is it a child, but it is his protégé.

_ My child, _ he doesn't quite think it, but he feels the possession in his voice and that adds another weight to his shoulders.

"Loth kitty," the stranger corrects with a laugh. Upon hearing Din sigh, his demeanor changes and he says, "I mean it with affection. I’ve heard you call it a rat and that’s not very nice."

The difference is that it’s  _ Din _ calling it names, not a stranger with a suspicious amount of fighting skill and strategic knowledge of the lower classes of the Outer Rim.

The child barrels into the leg of the chair and drops on its butt. Din lifts it up from the floor and puts it in its own chair, on his right. There’s mild protest from the child, but the activity wears it out enough that it ends up leaning on the backrest tiredly, like a retired, aging individual who has worked extremely hard their entire life.

Din scratches its head with his knuckles, merely a brush of his hand as he returns to the chair, but it’s enough to get a tiny happy noise out of the child.

In the Sharlissia system, Razor Crest moves from planet to planet, using each of their gravitational fields to slide from one end of the system to the other, saving a good deal of fuel in the process. Din alternates between working the control board and looking out the screen at the pitch black of the universe surrounding them. There are six planets here, orbiting an old sun, and most of them have several moons that criss-cross their path with their smaller, but still useful orbits. Din takes a moment to admire the beautiful sight of a giant gas planet rising ahead.

"Are you good? We might have to fight some thugs again," the stranger says, himself busy checking the area for any sign of a transport ship.

"Yes." 

The bacta spray might just be one of Din’s favourite inventions of the modern world. A day and a half later and there’s barely any trace left of his injuries, which, for someone in the bounty hunting business, is life-saving.

"We’ll have to take some real jobs soon, we’re running out of credits," Din says. An extra mouth to feed adds enough strain to their already precarious financial situation, not to mention that his last paying job involved the hassle with that mercenary Mayfeld. He’s spent a lot of money since.

"I have a feeling it might take a while to reach the top of this chain," the stranger says remorsefully. "I’m not keen on working for the Guild though."

"The Guild and I have had some… issues in recent months. I’d rather avoid it myself."

"Dare I ask what happened?"

They fly over the gas giant, and a second one, this one a colorful mix of reds and yellows, greets them in the distance. Din watches it grow progressively bigger as they transverse the distance between them, a lively dot against the black backdrop full of faraway stars.

"I broke some rules during a mission," Din explains. There’s so much more to this than that, yet at its essence, the matter is quite simple: he went against the bounty hunter’s code and is now paying for it—but it is a price he is glad to pay. "The client was not happy."

"You seem like a stickler for the rules," the stranger replies neutrally, "but we all have those moments, I suppose. What about the kid? How’d you end up together?"

"It needed my help."  _ And it helped me in turn. _

The stranger mulls over the information in silence.

Shortly afterward, the ship’s scanner picks up a signal and beeps insistently. A starcraft appears on the radar, hidden behind one of the red gas giant’s moons.

Both men tense up and exchange a look.

"Do we contact them or just go ahead and board them? I haven’t played the space pirate role in some time," the stranger says, lightening up.

Din’s eyes land on the device he scavenged from the nautolan’s office on Mizi. "I wonder… Hand me the holopad."

The stranger wordlessly passes it over, as well as brings himself closer, leaning on the backrest of the pilot’s seat with his elbow.

"I’m thinking we could send them a message posing as that alien, then go in and grab the armour parts."

"Sounds decent enough," the stranger says. "I feel like surprise attacks are becoming our specialty."

"You cannot deny their efficiency," Din says, remembering the very first surprise attack that brought this man to his and the child’s attention.

Din sets an approach course toward the craft while the stranger composes the fake message. The address details of the nautolan’s holopad should lift most of the suspicion over their head.

The holopad pings with a reply within a few minutes.

Din leans over the armrest of his chair to get a better look at the screen.

"‘Please confirm the security code,’" the stranger reads out, then looks at Din expectantly.

Annoyed, Din takes the holopad in his hands and types back, ‘Are you questioning my authority again? Run this device’s credentials, if it makes you sleep better at night.’

"Bold," the man comments, now the one hovering above Din’s shoulder to see the screen better. "I like it."

Din shrugs.

They wait for what feels like entire minutes for the next reply. When it comes, they hold their breath as the message appears on screen:

‘My apologies, boss. We saw the cheap ship and thought we should be careful. Word spread out from Mizi about some conflicts there.’

Din furrows his brows at the insult.

‘I’m laying low,’ the stranger types over Din’s shoulder. ‘Prepare to be boarded. I’m sending a new guy in.’

‘Understood.’

Communication over, the two of them look at each other again. 

A smile full of mirth rests on the stranger’s face, almost contagious. Despite the expression, he asks in all seriosity, "Did they buy it? Or are they faking it to let us  _ think _ they bought it but in fact they’re going to ambush us instead?"

"Guess you’ll find out, new guy."

"I have a feeling you’re exploiting my lack of a helmet, Mando," he grumbles.

Safely out of sight, Din cracks a smile as he regards the stranger’s exaggerated frown.

***

It turns out that the starcraft crew did not, in fact, expect to be crossed. They let the stranger enter without any hesitation, going as far as to defer to his authority. Din listens to their conversation from the safety of Razor Crest, ready to intervene should more firepower be required.

"Here is the stuff," one crewmate says. "The breastplate and a pauldron, as promised. The pauldron bears a signet, so as you can see, it is authentic."

In a display of great acting skills, the stranger starts talking again, voice bored and annoyed as one would expect from a henchmen with enough leverage over the rest to consider himself their better.  _ "Tsk, _ my boss is busy as is. Why didn’t you contact Xi'n Niang directly?"

"Madame requested radio silence…" comes a small, hesitant reply.

"Send me those logs. The boss won’t be pleased with this detour, in any case. I’d watch my back if I were you."

"Yes, sir!"

Din welcomes the stranger back on the ship with no laughable amount of pleasant surprise as he takes the box of Mandalorian armour from his hands.

After the two ships disconnect, he flies Razor Crest a ways away, within the orbit of the gas giant. The need to see what armour has been traded keeps him distracted enough that he descends back to the cargo hold to check.

A beautiful cuirass is laid in the box, wrapped in two thick pieces of black cloth. The craftsmanship is flawless, each cut and bend of the metal smooth and symmetrical. The pauldron is in worse a state, a different make than the cuirass, and one half is singed with smoke. Din takes it out with trembling hands, feeling a coldness creeping in his chest and over his spine. He swipes a thumb over the signet welded onto the pauldron and the cold becomes a stab of pain between his ribs, an icicle as sharp as the edge of a blade.

He knows this design.

The stranger peers at the items too, but keeps to the side. The atmosphere has dropped considerably around Din, curbing some of the man’s glee at another successful mission.

"Someone you knew?" the stranger asks quietly, staring at the pauldron.

Din breathes in heavily, one large breath that fills his lungs to the brim. When he exhales, he lets the tension go from his shoulders and follow the air into the ship. He doesn’t answer the question, doesn’t  _ have _ to, because a moment later, the stranger squeezes the space between Din’s shoulder and his neck in sympathy.

"We have time to turn around," the man suggests lightly.

Din looks at him with gratitude.

***

One less crew of Mandalorian hunters in the galaxy later, Din settles down back in the pilot’s seat wearily. Behind him, using a crate in lieu of a table, the stranger is eating canned food and dry fruit like it is a feast fit for royalty. He has two small bowls, a plate and a mug balanced on top of the crate, and on the floor next to it is the bottle of alcohol he bought back on Tatooine, almost entirely full.

The child sits bundled up in the green poncho the stranger acquired recently, only its eyes visible as it peers at them from its cocoon.

"Are you hungry?" the stranger asks between two mouthfuls.

The child's ears perk up.

Din sets the holopad aside and stands. The food for the child is kept in a special jar down in the cargo bay, where the freezebox is. As he passes them, he picks up the child from the box and heads to the ladder.

"Finish your investigation; I can feed it," the man pipes in.

"Don't worry. I need to eat myself." Halfway down the ladder, as an afterthought, Din says, "Don't come down."

In the quiet of the cargo bay, Din finds himself mourning the loss of his Mandalorian friend as he cuts up the child's food into tiny pieces. The pauldron hangs on the wall almost vengefully, the pair of twin daggers on it staring at him with gleaming blades. He didn’t know her well—a zabrak, raised on Nevarro—but, as a child, he was present when the Armourer granted her the signet before she departed from the covert. He crossed paths with her a few times, later on, during missions which took him far toward the edges of the Outer Rim, and she gave him sound pieces of advice, being twenty something years his senior.

Firm and caring, that Mandalorian had been, and now gone.

Looking at the other pieces of armour he has amassed, his grief doubles. So much family he will never have the chance to meet.

A soft tap on his leg reminds him of his business down here.

He hands the child its special tiny plate stacked with food and watches over it as it eats for a few minutes. He doesn’t feel hungry anymore, but ends up cracking open a few nuts, tilting his helmet back a bit and eating them one by one, feeling quite miserable.

Above, the stranger starts moving around, his footsteps crossing the area a few times before stopping away from Din and the child, at the tip of the ship.

They’re clearing out a threat, he and the Man with No Name. However truthful or not the man’s motivations may be, he’s helping Din and has proven to be quite a valuable asset. Would Din trust him with the care of the child, should his fate follow those of the Tribe members’?

What happens if he doesn’t find anyone, be it the child’s species, or the order of sorcerers the Armourer spoke of? Is he capable of caring for this child and providing it with everything it needs to grow healthily? What about its wizardry—could the child learn to control it on its own, when it is old enough?

Too many uncertainties surround this little creature, and though Din feels an attachment forming between them, he is afraid to prod at it too much. It’s certainly  _ there, _ in the periphery of his awareness, but he is not ready to acknowledge it yet. Certainly not while there is still a chance of getting in touch with anyone—anyone at all who could help.

By chance, the child lets out a little cough then. Din leans over it at once, but his assistance isn’t needed. It resumes eating its food, albeit at a slower pace, unruffled.

He scratches the top of its head gently and waits for it to finish, lost in thought.

***

The stranger seems to find an alarming amount of satisfaction in keeping himself busy. At least that’s the impression he gives Din when the latter resurfaces to the cockpit and finds the stranger tapping away on the holopad’s screen with utmost focus.

Either he’s really devoted to this cause, or he’s looking for a distraction as well, something to keep his mind from wandering in darker places.

Din would understand either way.

The man glances at Din in passing before he returns to his task. "I have some coordinates logged under a ‘Madame Xi'n.’ Baxel sector, somewhere in the Rinn system." He pulls up a star chart and pinpoints the location, precisely halfway across the Outer Rim.

"We don’t have enough fuel to reach that place," Din says thoughtfully, studying the map. 

"Not in the least. I guess we’ll be going on that credit run earlier than anticipated, hmm?"

"It was bound to happen eventually."

With the new plans in mind, they pore over the systems between Sharlissia and Rinn, looking for a good place to stop in and restock on their fuel and food.

Another step down, now moving onto the next. This Madame Xi'n won’t escape their grasp forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That post-credits scene is single-handedly keeping me on cloud nine right now. It is *almost* Saturday for me so uhh early chapter for my American readers!
> 
> What is the probability of me making even more Dollars Trilogy / Clint Eastwood references going forward? 100%
> 
> I am on [Tumblr](https://maderilien.tumblr.com/) and on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/maderilien), if anyone wants to chat!


	4. The Negotiator

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays!! Santa's brought an(other) early chapter!

Mando takes them to a small green planet, barely a blip on the radar, with few spaceports to pick from. As they descend, Boba keeps himself busy with the nautolan’s holopad, browsing the local holonet for more information. There isn’t a lot to speak of: the populace seems quite poor, with not much of an economy—certainly nothing noteworthy on a galactic scale—save for a serious world-wide investment in agricultural techniques and machinery.

A particular headline catches his eye:  _ Crime on the rise as the Minister of Galactic Foreign Affairs reopens borders! _

The article goes a lot more in depth about the political issues between this planet and the neighbouring one, detailing the long history of economical tug-of-war conflicts between them, including periods of subjugation and downright colonialism, which have thoroughly influenced the development of the local population. 

It is, to put it simply, none of Boba’s business, so he moves onto another tab.

The Guild is not affiliated with anyone in this system, much to Mando’s visible relief when Boba relays the news. Boba doesn’t care about it too strongly, but it’s been a long time since he’s had to struggle to find missions, so this search proves to be a disappointing reminder that most bounty hunters don’t have it very well in the galaxy.

When  _ he _ started out, as early as his introduction to the Underworld was, some of the best had been there to take him under their wing. Later, he came to define the very notion of high quality bounty hunting, reputation which brought many perks with it, chief among which was indulging in, at the risk of his own life, banter with Lord Vader. Suffice to say that the world treats those at the top very differently.

Once they land, Mando takes the lead, which Boba is content to follow for now. It lets him keep an eye on their surroundings, in case another pile of scum decide they want to throw hands with a Mandalorian. (Two Mandalorians, really, but this isn’t the main topic of discussion at the moment.)

The weather is pleasant, if a tad too warm. A faint breeze comes and goes at its own caprice, balancing the rays of the sun at its peak with its refreshing coolness. The buildings are spread far on the low terrain, none of them bearing more than one floor above ground. In the far distance, the beginning of a forest reveals itself above the roofs, their leaves the colour of rust and gold gleaming in the sunlight.

On the street, they meet the natives of the land: shorter than the average human and bearing two sets of upper limbs. A lot of them have well defined muscles, though Boba wonders how well they know how to fight—perhaps all the strenuous physical activity that they do is actually for working the fields all day.

Mando takes them to the first inn that pops up in their way. They are welcomed with reticence (the guns strapped at their sides earning the stares of several patrons), but the owner of the place soon warms up to them once Mando pays for some food for the child, and to Boba’s surprise, invites Boba to order whatever he wants.

"I’m keeping a tab," Boba tells him seriously once food and water is placed on their table. "I’ll pay you back once I get some credits of my own."

The Mandalorian doesn’t reply in any particular way, much to Boba’s chagrin.

Either he has to start getting creative about Mando’s actual expressions, or he has to pay a lot more attention to his smallest gestures.

On the child’s plate there is a mass of long, thin and weirdly-patterned… tails? Boba watches it grab one with its hand, revealing a tiny head at the end of the creature, and he blinks, mildly impressed. Worm or snake, once the child gets a taste of it, it starts devouring the rest of the plate with passion.

"Slow down," Mando says, reaching across the table and pushing the child back in its chair. In its fervour, it had leaned forward until its head almost touched the plate.

"This kid of yours has the most interesting diet," Boba says.

Mando shrugs.

When the owner passes by their table again carrying a tray of dirty dishes, Mando catches her attention with a wave of his hand.

"Do you have any idea where we could find some temporary work?"

The owner regards him and Boba with squinty eyes, sizing them up head to toe. "How temporary?"

"A day or maybe two days’ work."

She folds the lower set of her arms, eyebrows furrowing further as she thinks. "You look like you could handle yourself in a fight," she tells Mando, not quite phrased as a question, but expecting a form of confirmation.

He nods sharply. Mando’s hand is clenched tightly into a fist on the table, next to the child’s plate, and the slight movement tells Boba just how impatient he is to secure some credits.

"Look for an old weequay at the blacksmithy past the old hangars in the north. He should have something for you," she says.

"Thank you."

"Good luck," she tells them, then takes her leave to serve her other customers.

Alone again, Mando levels Boba with a  _ look _ through his helmet. It kind of feels like he’s smirking, with the way he’s tilting his head, but really, maybe Boba is just projecting what he wants to see on the blank visor.

Back on the streets, many of the civilians let them pass instinctively, shying away from their presence by going as far as crossing the street to walk on the other sidewalk. It feels like this planet has seen too much conflict in its recent history.

Walking through the settlement is almost relaxing. Carried by the wind, the scent of wheat and wildflowers brings with it a freshness and a clarity of mind rarely found in more populated areas. It awakens a longing inside of him as they cross the streets, a sense of déjà connu, the simplicity of these farmers' life reminding him of his father's home. Not a place he has been to, but one, he thinks, that could have felt a lot like this.

The further they walk from the inn, the more off-worlders are mixed in with the crowd. In the northern district, around what must be the old hangars, almost everyone is of a different origin, and the architecture itself reflects this change of pace in the vibrant palette of yellows and greens.

Despite the liveliness of its aesthetic, however, the mood is rather subdued when Boba and Mando reach the place.

At the blacksmith’s workshop, Mando beelines toward the first person that he sees. Boba catches the unfortunate soul’s look of intense fear right before Mando reaches them and blocks his vision. 

Certainly, someone completely decked out in beskar appearing out of the blue and striding with such purpose would make for a frightening sight. 

Boba stifles a laugh before he joins them, the child floating by his side.

"...for a weequay," says Mando, all business.

"Uh," says the civilian, shaking in their boots.

"Have you seen a weequay around here?" Mando insists.

"Uhhh…"

"Am I so famous that even on this backwater planet somebody is looking for me?" a new voice rings out, raspy, with a slight accent to the end of his syllables.

Boba freezes.

Of  _ all _ the weequays—

The alien in question appears in the doorway, hands on his hips. He’s dressed in work clothes, nothing worth mentioning, and he has a straw hat on his head, large enough that the brim covers the upper half of his face as he stands with his head bent down. It could be anyone, but the voice is truly unmistakable.

Hondo Ohnaka tilts his chin up and regards them curiously, with the peculiar mix of welcoming and calculating that he has mastered in his many decades of space piracy.

"A Mandalorian!" he exclaims in surprise. "How funny! I was just wondering what the bounty on my head was these days."

Mando glances at Boba in question. 

This distresses Boba for many reasons, chief among which is being recognized. He and Hondo have crossed paths enough for some familiarity to exist between them, not to mention the weequay’s involvement in the clone wars—he  _ must _ have seen plenty of troopers back then.

"I’m not here for you," Mando says, though by the way he doesn’t quite end the sentence, rather letting it hang in-between them, perhaps he might be prone to changing his mind.

"No? Delightful!" Hondo gestures for them to approach. "Come, then you are my guests. Has the Madama at Lili’s Inn & Breakfast sent you my way?"

The alien Mando was unknowingly harassing makes themselves scarce the moment Mando isn’t looking their way anymore. Boba doesn’t fault them; he’d even join them, had he less at stake to lose—he finds he’d rather not have Mando think he runs away from difficult situations. Now if only he could get the weequay alone for a few minutes...

The pirate leads them into the building, all the way to a study further in the back, where there are shelves stacked with holobooks and many trinkets scattered around. Several boxes are stacked in a corner and leaning next to them are several gardening tools. A desk rests in the middle of the room, with one large and plushy chair on one side, and a plain wooden stool on the other.

Hondo stops in the doorway upon noticing this unfortunate seating situation. "No, no, this is unfit for a Mandalorian," he mumbles. His eyes fall on Boba, who doesn’t look away but it is a close thing, and he tilts his head inquisitively. "Your henchman can wait here, however. Have we met?"

"No," Boba answers, annoyed.

"Hmm," is all Hondo says, watching him with interest.

Mando takes one step closer to Boba. "He’s coming with me."

Hondo concedes without further protests and they move to a dining room. On the way, he asks a protocol droid for some refreshments to be brought in, then the three of them each take a seat at the table.

"So, business, then?"

"I understand you have a job," says Mando.

The pirate scratches his chin in thought. "Indeed I do, but you need more than two men for it."

Boba scoffs and shakes his head.

"Are you sure we haven’t met? Hey, you’re not a cl—"

"I told you, we  _ haven’t _ met," Boba stresses.

"Hmm."

_ "No." _

The pirate looks unconvinced, but does not bring the matter up anymore. Some of the tension in the air vanishes when the protocol droid brings cold beverages and fruit on a metal tray, which Hondo offers to them both. To quench the rising fire inside of him, Boba focuses on the fruit, picking out slices of each type and coaxing the child to have a taste. Goodness knows its diet needs some diversity.

The job sounds feasible enough. 

To Boba’s utter surprise, it turns out Hondo Ohnaka is running a legitimate business nowadays, some transport firm he boasts for their reliability and swiftness. Two of his ships crashed in a planet’s asteroid belt and lost precious cargo—smuggled, of course—which subsequently made several crimelords extremely unhappy about the loss of profit, so now Hondo is laying low with the farmers here while the waters clear in the galaxy.

He doesn’t say it in quite those words, but Boba catches on easily.

"A bunch of local thugs got a hold of my ship. They’re keeping it close by, beyond the forest." Hondo stares at both of them in turn, somber. "Retrieve it and you'll find I can be quite generous."

"How generous?" asks Mando.

"For you, ten thousand credits."

"That’s how little you care about your ship?" Boba laughs humourlessly. "Forget about it, old man."

"You will not find a better paying job here." Hondo glares at him, visibly wounded by the words.

Mando looks between them and stays silent, letting Boba continue his negotiations.

(Blackmail?)

"Perhaps," Boba concedes, lips pulling into a tiny, self-assured smirk, "but who knows what might happen on the way back. Our own ship isn't doing too good right now, if you know what I mean."

"Fifteen thousand. Final offer," Hondo grits out.

Mando inhales, no doubt with an agreement on his lips, the poor bastard.

Boba lays a hand on his shoulder before he can open his mouth and doom them to underpaid work.

"You said this job needs more than two men, weequay. I’m not risking my life for anything under thirty thousand."

"Are you  _ out of your mind?" _ the pirate cries, standing up in one brusque movement. The glasses rattle on the table. "My firm is in shambles! I’m  _ this _ close to ruin!" He holds his index and thumb fingers a fraction apart.

Mando settles back in his chair and turns to Boba expectantly, eyebrow raised. 

(The raised eyebrow is once again a projection of Boba’s, but by all that’s good in this galaxy, he would  _ swear _ it’s there this time.)

"Better learn how to be a farmer then. Let’s go, Mando."

He stands, grabs a handful of fruit, and heads for the door without looking behind him. Metal clanging lets him know Mando is following his lead without protest, much to his satisfaction.

Any moment now…

"Wait!" Hondo shouts. "I can give you twenty-two and a half, but no more. Please, there’s no traffic on this planet. Nobody knows how to fight. I’m  _ stuck." _

Boba smirks.

_ This? _

He missed this.

"What do you think, Mando? That’s almost half of your usual rate—"

Hando whines despondently behind them.

"—but I guess we’ll have to settle for it."

"Yes," Mando agrees.

Hondo slaps a hand on Boba’s back and pushes him out of the room, toward the entrance. Mando and the child follow behind at a more reasonable pace.

"A deposit, please, before we take our leave," Boba drawls at the front door, extending one hand.

The pirate glares at him, at the end of his wits, and disappears back in the house.

He returns with a small bag clinking deliciously with credits.

"You… you scoundrels! Go, go, I don’t want to see you anymore. Bring me back my ship in one piece, or else—!"

Mando inclines his head in thanks, then they leave the area with a small spring in their step.

Hondo's final cry reaches them when they're a respectable distance away: "Robbed in broad daylight! Robbed!"

***

This mission is as standard as they come: get in, clear the area, get out. There is no need for exploration or digging for intel, no need for subtlety or pretense. In the later years of his career, Boba's work became far too nuanced and subtle to allow for this amount of nonchalance, so he greets this job with enthusiasm.

As they are loading up their equipment, Mando finally reveals some of his thoughts.

"That was some daring haggling," he says.

Boba inclines his head in thanks. "I’ve had plenty of opportunities to practice it."

Mando looks at him briefly, as if on the verge of asking something.

"What is it?"

More hesitation—or perhaps it is pensiveness as Mando takes out his gun and looks it over in silence.

It takes a few minutes for him to speak again.

"You said you have never met, but you  _ do _ know him, don’t you?"

"From a distance," Boba shrugs. "We had some mutual acquaintances, you could say, back in the day. His pirate crew used to be quite well established in the Outer Rim. I have no doubt that he will honour our deal."

"The credits should cover the rest of our journey."

Boba glances at him from the corner of his eye and says lightly, "Not if you keep buying tons of candy, they won't."

Mando laughs. "I saw you eat your fair share of them. Don't pretend."

"You're mistaken," Boba says haughtily. "The kid left those wrappers in the cockpit."

"Uh-huh," Mando plays along, "the kid. I see."

"Though if you do buy more, perhaps get different flavours at least?"

Mando clicks his mouth, but doesn't comment further. He seems to be in good spirits overall, and he hands Boba a couple of thermal detonators, the movement like a casual extension of Mando’s solitary routine—wordlessly, seamlessly including Boba now.

***

They take the child to the inn. For the lack of an alternative, Razor Credit is parked out in the sun, and without the ship running, it is a death trap of discomfort and heat. To prevent the little gremlin from baking, Mando redirects them to the inn, where he calls for the lady's help.

"Did he send you to the forest?" she asks as she takes the child from Mando's hands. "Just the two of you?"

"Do you know anything about the thugs?" Mando asks, tensing up.

"Thugs?" she repeats, mildly offended upon hearing such a word. "They're our foolhardy youth, thinking they can make a difference."

Boba and Mando both freeze and exchange a brief look.

"Political nonsense," she goes on wearily. "An exclusionist, xenophobic bunch who think gatekeeping our market is the solution. They bring more trouble here than the colonists they're so against."

"Thank you," Boba says graciously, perhaps a bit too polite, and sidesteps the lady, ready to leave. He would prefer not to hear any more details, but it becomes rapidly apparent he is alone in thinking like this as Mando gets a hold of his arm and holds him in place.

"What do you mean?" Mando asks.

"Bah, I’m not holding you a history lesson," the owner grumbles. "Ask them yourself. Make sure you come back alive, I am not taking care of this creature for you."

Mando, "We’ll be back."

They rent out two speeders from a reluctant native merchant, then head to the forest, raising a proper trail of dust behind them.

A question arises—will they dispatch of the group or let them go?

This question isn't one Boba is asking  _ himself— _ nor one he would have, years ago—but still he thinks this is what is keeping Mando's shoulders and hands so stiff on the handlebars of the speeder, in such a reversal of his earlier mood.

Every action has consequences, but until now, Boba has only been interested in one single consequence of his actions: the arrival of payment under his name. To consider the many tiny after-effects of someone's death is not good for any self-respecting bounty hunter's mental health.

Around the halfway mark of their journey, Boba decides to breach the subject, despite knowing it to be fruitless.

"In and out?" he asks, following the Mandalorian's movements from the corner of his eye.

He doesn't reply for a good number of minutes. Boba repeats himself more loudly, over the noise of the engine and the wind whipping past their heads.

"I heard you the first time," Mando says stiffly. "I haven't decided."

Boba sighs. Sometimes it's better to not know who the target is beyond a name or a face. "How do you expect to do a non-lethal exchange?"

"I don't know," Mando bites back, clearly frustrated. "You're the negotiator. Maybe you can figure out something."

"Not like this!" Boba retorts in a similar scathing tone, but does spend the rest of the way trying to think of a solution.

Things aren't looking very well, all in all.

***

They cut through the forest, following a dirt path from one side to the other. Parallel to them runs a river, its waters clear and loud as the current catches on logs and rocks. As the hours pass, the sun begins to set, replacing the game of light and shadow it creates as it is streaming through the treetops with the heavy dimness of dusk.

Around the same time the shadows fall darker, Mando finally signals them to stop. He looks into the distance using his Amban rifle, adjusting it a few times to garner enough information.

Boba uses a thermal spyglass, small, not as good for observing the details of a scene, but perfect for assessing the size of the enemy. Several heat signatures pop up on his visual field, cluttered around an undulating flame reaching to the sky.

"Here," Mando whispers, giving him the rifle. "Focus on the two standing to the right, away from the campfire."

Very much regretting it, Boba takes the weapon and scopes in.

Two natives are standing by the edge of Hondo's ship, one of them doing something to the other’s hair. Relaxed, unaware of the threat looming in the forest, they carry on a private conversation that keeps their body language easy and casual.

"Why am I looking at this?" Boba asks.

"They look like children to me."

"In height, perhaps," Boba agrees as he takes another look. The people around the campfire are sturdier, taller, with better defined muscles in their arms—defined enough to be noticed from this far away.

Mando stands straighter, seemingly coming to a decision. He demands his weapon back. "I have a plan."

***

If all of Boba's enemies, dead or alive, would point their guns at him all at once, he would still face them with more confidence than he has now, standing behind Mando, while more than twenty natives are aiming their weapons at the two of them. His enemies would at least have a good reason to do so, whereas Mando has placed both of them on a silver plate and offered it to the bandits free of charge.

No—not free of charge.

Even worse.

"What’s fifteen thousand credits going to do to help us?" the leader of the natives asks, chin tilted up high. She doesn’t reach Mando’s shoulder, but carries herself with such authority that it is easy to see why anyone would defer to her word. "The ship’s worth at least eighty thousand, not to mention what’s left of its cargo."

"Hear me out," Mando starts, pauses to breathe in deeply, then pleads, "this could be a mutually beneficial deal."

"We do not deal with off-worlders!" she snarls, adjusting her grip on her rifle. "This helps  _ him. _ Us? Not at all. Why, it hurts our reputation, even! We have had enough of aliens exploiting our labour!"

Some of the natives around them take a step forward, closing the circle around the two men. Mando moves one hand behind him in a feeble attempt at shielding Boba from their sights.

(There are too many enemies for it to count, but Boba appreciates the gesture.)

"He’s a smuggler! A good one, at that," Mando goes on unphased by the growing tension around them. "Give back the ship. He can supply you with any weapons and resources you might need."

She scoffs.

"He will leave if he has the means to."

_ That _ makes the leader pause and consider.

_ Karking hell, _ Boba thinks as he watches the leader call another two to confer quietly,  _ the fool’s really doing it! _

Mando speaks more confidently, now that he sees his words are garnering some traction. "The credits from us can buy you plenty of ammunition and fuel."

A weathered, wrinkled older woman takes over the discussion, stepping forward, in line with the leader. When she speaks, the murmuring among the other natives quiets down, giving her thin, faint voice the silence it needs to be heard properly.

"We oppose one very specific people," she says, staring not just at the two men, but also at her brethren and at the leader herself, on whom the old woman’s eyes linger last and longest. "Do not become what the sympathizers call you in town. This is an opportunity."

"You’re right, " the leader breathes out, "you’re right." She looks at Mando seriously, mouth set in determination, less hostile but just as fierce as before. "Bring me proof of his agreement and you have a deal. Your henchman stays here in the meantime, as insurance."

Both Mando and Boba sigh, but in spectrally opposite emotions.

(To be fair, it is very much Boba’s turn to be manhandled, so he tries not to take it to heart.)

Two bandits grab onto Boba's arms, their hold on him like iron bands, and a third one pushes him further inside their base with the barrel of their gun against the small of his back. He goes as patiently as he can, seeing as there is nothing else for him to do now that Mando has decided to screw up the simplest of bounty hunting guidelines. It’s clear to see how he could have gotten the whole of the Guild up on his head, when facing such decisions that he filters through his personal moral code.

He's got Boba thinking about what is the right course of action here too, which rapidly becomes a tiring exercise, as similar bounties Boba had in his prime return to his memory and he realizes his decisions would have made Mando shake his head disapprovingly.

It irks him, both to realize they would have disagreed, and the modicum of regret that washes over him when the better choices present themselves to him in retrospect.

The bandits' base is inside an old-fashioned mill that reaches the wheat fields at the edge of the forest, merely a minute’s walk away from Hondo’s ship.

Boba is taken to an empty side room near the building’s central chamber, past the large grinding stones. He sits down on a sack of flour and waits, brooding. One native stands guard next to him and another at the door, weapon drawn. It's embarrassing, to say the least, and if he had had his proper getup, he would have had a good chance of making it out of this, but he doesn't, so stewing in irritation, he waits for Mando to return with Hondo’s confirmation.

He doesn’t even have the chance to see Hondo’s face when Mando tells him what the new plan is.

***

On the way to the inn, Mando keeps looking at him every couple of seconds, alternating between trying to subtly turn his helmet around and openly staring at the side of Boba's face when he sees that Boba offers no reaction whatsoever.

They're unscathed. The fight was avoided entirely, which is no small feat, and yet Boba finds little joy in the matter. He watched Mando take credits with one hand and then throw the whole bag away with the other without a second thought. Truly the pinnacle of unexpected compassion and sympathy.

Picking the child up from the inn finally distracts Mando. It also turns Boba’s frustration into simple resignation, and the half an hour they spend restocking their food in the farmer’s market gives him enough time to come to terms with this conclusion.

The air inside the ship is stuffy and hot. Mando goes to turn the ship on, while Boba spends double the time taking off the weapons and armour.

The child hangs around him in the cargo hold, making small noises now and then as it watches him deposit each item back in the weapon locker.

After all is said and done, they’re barely left with seven thousand credits.

"No more candy for either of us," Boba whispers wearily.

Later, when he's alone, lying on the floor and trying to fall asleep, the tiniest part of him acknowledges that it takes a considerable amount of strength of character to make the decisions that Mando does.

He doesn't know if he has it in him to be good like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had SO much fun writing Hondo in this chapter! I hope it was entertaining to read too~ Many ways of negotiation to explore hehe
> 
> Thank you for reading! ♥


	5. Hunter & Prey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy new year!

Din wakes to alarms blaring and the decidedly worrying sound of cursing from the cockpit. Next to him, the child starts mewling in distress, quietly at first, but as Din rushes out of his sleeping quarters, its cries grow louder. There’s no time to linger, so a little pat on the head is all Din can offer the child before he hurries up the ladder.

He is halfway inside the cockpit when Razor Crest suddenly decelerates and throws him forward, ramming his waist into the edge of the trap door and knocking the air out of him. 

At the controls, Din hears the very distinctive sound of a human body knocking into metal.

A number of Huttese expletives make their way out of the stranger’s mouth. "No more turbulence, you can come in," he grumbles from the pilot’s seat, voice laced with anger. "We have some technical issues."

"What happened?"

"The navigation system failed. I took us out of the hyperdrive before an asteroid turned us into stardust or worse."

Din picks himself up and walks over to the front of the ship, using the wall as leverage. Several lights are flickering on the board and the nav screen returns a string of numbers and a worrying error code.

"Any idea where we are right now?" Din asks.

The stranger brings a hand to his forehead and massages his temple wearily. "Somewhere on the Manda Merchant Route. I couldn’t get a good look at our path. I was asleep."

"That’s not too far off of our path." Resting his elbow over the back of the seat, Din leans closer to the nav controls and fiddles with a few buttons. Nothing changes on the screen, much to his disappointment. "Let me see if I can fix it."

The stranger stands, visibly glad to concede all responsibilities to him. He gathers his blanket, sits on the left passenger seat with his feet propped up on its edge, and gets comfortable with the soft bantha wool thrown around his shoulders.

Sleep-addled himself, it takes Din a good minute to make sense of the error and begin the ship’s diagnostics. The entire mapping system is down, leaving them stranded in the middle of nowhere. If he can't fix it, he'll have to fly it blindly to the nearest space port, and while he’s done plenty of flying in his time, this might just be above his skillset. 

A distress signal would bring help, but also a whole lot of trouble.

"You know," the stranger says, voice mellow and tired, "with twenty thousand credits you could have installed some real state of the art technology on this ship."

"Listen," Din starts off harshly, a notch too loud to be considered anywhere near respectful, "I made my decision. There was a lot more going on there than that weequay led us to believe. Besides, we couldn’t have taken them all on."

In the same even tone as before, the stranger argues back: "We could’ve. They had children and elders mingled in—easy to exploit if need be. Haven’t I proven I can handle myself yet?"

"I’m not saying you can’t, but—"

"Don’t you trust me at all?"

Upon hearing these words, the fight leaves Din in the span of a weary exhale. When he turns, he finds the stranger watching him coldly—shame replaces whatever anger Din might have felt before, like he’s betrayed his friend (friend?). "I do trust you," he whispers back quietly, though it doesn't sound believable to his own ears.

"Not enough to let me protect myself properly, in any case," the man mumbles to the side, folding his arms.

"Again about that armour?" Din is really, truly tired of this conversation and they’ve barely exchanged a few words. This is why he prefers to work alone. When he has to make a decision, the fall-out is his and his alone to deal with, be it good or bad. He can carry that responsibility alone. "That’s different and you know it."

"You don’t know a single thing, Mando. Not one thing."

"Who are you to criticize me?  _ That _ really is the question, isn’t it?"

The stranger laughs sharply. 

Din looks his way, fingers clenching into fists over the keyboard. He thinks of his covert on Nevarro standing up for him not that long ago, of the piles and piles of armour in the tunnels, a metal grave around the Armourer. He thinks of that imposter on Tatooine, of all the armour he’s found since, scattered in the universe.

It fills him with rage—not just the stranger’s tactless insistence at wearing what isn’t his, but how weathered Din’s kind are, and what great storms and prejudice they have to battle in the world for no other reason than their identity.

He exhales in a feeble attempt at tempering himself, then speaks slowly, with as much calm as he can muster: 

"You have no right to put that helmet over your head."

"You mourn your fallen brethren, but I’m still alive and I’m right here," the stranger argues back. His voice doesn’t rise at all, but it carries an uncomfortable bitterness that only grows as their conversation progresses. "I deserve it far more than any dead man."

"We are hunted for what is rightfully ours. Do you think I would let you, a nobody, touch what others have died for to regain?"

"You’re making this far bigger than it is, Mando. It’s a piece of metal."

Din stares at the floor, near the stranger’s feet, unable to lift his eyes any higher. He knows he’s right, but he’s tired of having to explain himself to others and be met with scorn and disdain. Even so, a part of him  _ wants _ this man to understand him, and for that reason alone he keeps talking.

"This piece of metal is part of my culture. This is what I believe in," he says.

"So much faith," the stranger scoffs. "If only more of them were like you."

A tense silence befalls them, interrupted only by the beeping of the diagnostics scanner.

"What's that noise?" the man asks, standing up.

The child!

It’s crying in the cargo hold, very faintly. 

Din steps forward, intent to find it and soothe it, but the stranger stops him with a gesture of his hand. "I’ll go. See if you can get us out of here," he mumbles, sounding as despondent as Din feels inside.

Denial hangs on the tip of his tongue. It must be clear on Din’s face, the disapproval, because the man’s expression shuts off completely and, right before he descends down the stairs, he adds blankly: 

"I’m not going to hurt it."

"That’s not…" Din trails off, alone in the cockpit. "I never thought you would."

Mentally exhausted and frustrated with himself, Din returns his attention to the computer. With the results of the superficial quick scans showing no useful information, he sets up a thorough system-wide scan to figure out where the problem lies. 

There isn’t anything else he can do but wait, and wait he will for at least a few standard hours, so he settles back in the pilot’s seat and stares at the cosmic darkness, eyes unfocused. 

He’s trying very hard not to listen to the voice drifting through the floor of the ship, but it is a difficult thing, when all he can think about is his conversation  _ (argument, _ his mind reminds him) with the other man, and how much it hurt to end it on such a hopeless note.

The voice quiets down at some point.

In the ensuing silence, Din lets his head back on the chair and closes his eyes tiredly. The scan notification should wake him up when it’s done.

***

Razor Crest shakes suddenly in one powerful move that rattles it from side to side.

Heart in his throat, Din jumps out of the seat. 

Have they hit something? 

He glances at the screen, finds the scan still running, and then, when he looks out the window, he freezes. 

Surrounding the ship is the bright, tell-tale sign of a tractor beam pulling them backward.

He stumbles over his own feet as he dashes to the cargo hold. As soon as he touches the floor, however, he’s being pushed to the side insistently.

"Hide, hide, hide," the stranger whispers urgently.

For a second, Razor Crest is weightless in the air, before it drops heavily inside their captor’s ship. Din smacks backward in the partition to his sleeping area. Without losing a beat, the stranger presses the button by the side of the panel and pushes him inside.

"Wait," Din says, confused.

The ramp shakes on its hinges. It doesn’t open right away, but it won’t be long until it does.

The man looks at the door with growing determination, then gives Din a tiny smile. "Surprise attacks, remember?"

The panel slides shut, sealing Din inside.

There is more clanging outside, then a loud blast that rattles the entire ship. Din listens breathlessly, aware of his lack of weapons, his lack of armour. 

The child is not here either.

Blaster fire erupts from the cargo hold, followed by several cries of pain, one of them close enough that a shiver passes through Din’s body. He knows the voice enough to recognize it by now.

In the cacophony of more shots and the unforgiving cadence of steel-heeled boots entering the ship, Din realizes they all let their guard down too easily.

"I have the Mandalorian," a deep voice calls out.

"Like kriff you do," the stranger says back, out of breath.

More shots, more scuffling. 

A body hits the floor heavily. Din doesn’t even have time to worry about whom it might belong to—moments later, a heavy weight slams into the surface of the partition, then the stranger screams out in pain.

His assailant grunts weakly in pain in turn. 

New sets of footsteps enter the ship and the struggle goes on for a few more minutes before there is quiet again.

"What are you idiots doing?!" a male voice yells from farther away.

"We lost Lux, Passika, Tilly, and Bree, boss!"

Moments later, much closer to Din, the previous speaker barely contains his anger when he asks, "This bastard killed four of you before you could shoot him?"

"He’s a Mandalo—"

"He’s in his blasted nightclothes, you amateur!"

Din prepares himself to retaliate, senses heightened by the adrenaline replacing his blood at this point.

The captors grumble and mumble some more as they shuffle about the cargo hold.

"There's the rat!" a nasty voice cries out just as the child's familiar crying erupts in the cargo hold.

Din's heart is beating so fast that it feels like it's not working anymore.

"Doesn't seem to be much meat on it," the alien comments.

"Hush, Koppo. We get ten times the money if it's still alive," the boss says.

"I could remove a leg or two. That doesn't kill if you know what you're doing—and  _ I _ certainly know what I'm doing, sir."

"No."

Din listens to them walking away from the ship, taking the child with them. He waits a bit longer and with good reason: two henchmen return to remove the bodies of their fallen comrades.

"I'll miss you, Bree," says one of them, choked up on tears.

"What do we do with this one?" the other asks.

"Is he dead? Throw him out the airlock."

"We can't throw him out the airlock, you idiot. There's a bounty on his head too. Besides," a brief pause, "he's still breathing. Look!"

"Well, tie him up then, kriffing hell! My friend's dead, and no bounty is going to bring her back!"

"Let's take him to the boss."

The commotion finally ceases and with the two aliens dragging the stranger's unconscious body away, Din finally forces himself to breathe. Every single expansion of his ribcage hurts like there is not enough air in his lungs, but there is neither any more room for them to grow in. A counterweight presses down on his sternum, and though he can barely hear anything through the thudding in his ears, he finds a quiet moment to sneak out and put on his armour.

The inside of the cargo hold is a disaster. Blood is splattered on the floor and on the walls, and the entrance is a gaping hole, half of the ramp broken off, the rest caved in to the side of the ship. 

How much longer until these people learn? Nobody crosses paths with him and lives to tell the tale, not if they intend to harm the child. He hoped Moff Gideon's death would put an end to this bounty, but he was foolish to think so; where one Imperial dies, two others spring up in their place.

At least they still want the child alive.

Alone, that thought is the only thing keeping him level headed enough to plan his actions.

If he gets to the stranger in time, that would be good too, but he isn't Din's main concern.

_ Of course he isn't, _ Din thinks stubbornly. A strange feeling of loss floods him, like he's standing in a box filling with water.

Not the priority, but he will do what he can to save him.

He won’t let their parting words be words of anger and resentment.

***

Like a ghost, Din sneaks in the ventilation system of the pirates’ ship and begins his reconnaissance.

It is a model meant for repairing smaller crafts, containing one large opening at the back for the ships, where they caught Razor Crest, and several storage spaces between the working zone and the bridge. 

Fortunately for Din, the crew is spread out on the ship. 

He uses the shafts to move around, and when he sees one person by themself, he drops down and takes them out.

It goes slowly like this, but he doesn’t want to be detected until the very end, to ensure he will extract the child safely. Some takedowns bring more satisfaction than others: he keeps one alien in a chokehold, listening to its deteriorating breath against the background humming of the ship engines, and it fuels him to go forward, and do the very same to the bastards who touched the child and the stranger.

By the time he reaches the command center, his vibroblade is dripping with the blood of several species, and his hand is itching for a gunfight. 

The finale should be loud.

He gives the room an initial once-over—to the extent the ventilation grid allows him. Several pirates are scattered on the bridge. A computer board is set up to the right, by the window, three more stations are arranged by the walls, and in-between them a large table is set up off-centre, laden with food, some credits and a deck of cards.

Slumped on the floor, back held up by one leg of the table, is the stranger from Tatooine. His tank top is more red than white, tattered on his right side, where he must have gotten shot. His left arm hangs awkwardly at his side.

Din forces himself to look away.

The child doesn’t seem to be here.

The pilot, a rodian, calls out to the man in the middle of the room: "The trajectory is set, boss."

The boss—tall, lean, dressed in an expensive-looking black fighting suit, folds his arms and grunts in affirmation. He walks over to the table where the stranger is, and kicks him in the sole of his boot.

"Wake up."

The stranger tenses up, but doesn’t say anything in reply.

"Where did all your friends from Nevarro run off to?" the boss asks, leaning above him menacingly. "There’s been a spike in demand for beskar, did you know that?"

The stranger remains decidedly silent.

Huffing with derision, the pirate leans closer to him and slaps the side of his face lightly, tauntingly. "Just a man… How disappointing. Nothing without your armour, are you?"

"Boss!" a new voice intervenes. A female devaronian runs up to the two of them and sways on her feet as she waits to be acknowledged.

His demeanour changes at once upon seeing her distress. "Something wrong?"

"Two dead in the food storage room," she cries.

"Where’s the asset? Did you check the cameras?"

"It looked like a Mandalorian."

"We have the Mandalorian and he travels alone," the boss says slowly, a hint of doubt creeping into his voice as he speaks. "He  _ was _ alone on the ship, wasn’t he?"

The stranger makes a strange noise then, a dark chuckle that overshadows his whimpers of pain. "You have the wrong one, buddy."

The boss, the devaronian, the pilot and the two other henchmen dilly-dallying in a corner all look at each other. Tension rises around them like the oceans pulled in by the moon.

"The asset!" the boss exclaims with dawning horror. He nods to his henchmen sharply. "You two, keep an eye on the prisoner. Mal, with me. Quick!"

They spread out, the boss and the devaronian rushing out of the control room in a flurry.

Din breathes in once, slowly, seeking that minutiae of focus he needs to remain rational, in control, then drops down through the grate, drawing his gun the moment he lands. 

Years of practice have honed his aim and intuition to exceptional levels: he shoots the two henchmen in the blink of an eye without taking any damage himself. Before the rodian gets a chance to do anything, Din sends his whipcord to the pilot’s seat. It locks around the arm of the alien and sends them flying backward when Din retracts it. He looks at the alien for a second, taking notice of the way they’re looking at him with wide eyes full of fear, before he presses the trigger again.

Room cleared, he runs to the side of the stranger and cuts the rope tying him to the table. The man’s head lolls from one side to the other as he struggles to look at Din directly.

"Did… did it hurt?" he asks with difficulty.

"Did what hurt?" Din asks back as he looks over his injuries. The most alarming wound is the one at his side, still bleeding sluggishly. There isn’t much Din can do right now except slap some gauze over it and hope the stranger doesn’t bleed out before Din makes sure the child is safe as well.

"When you fell from the ceiling."

"Stop talking."

He places his right hand over Din’s. "Listen, you gotta take care of your knees. Bad landings are very bad."

Din frees his hand and presses the stranger’s over his wound instead. "Don’t move your hand. I’ll be right back."

As loathe as he is to leave the man defenseless and clearly concussed in a puddle of his own blood, time is running out for the other member of Din’s little clan. He runs out of the control chamber and follows the noises. 

An alien is slumped in the middle of the corridor, someone Din knows for sure he didn’t take out. Intrigued and alarmed, he advances.

The commotion grows around a tiny room to the left-hand side of the main path. Blaster shots ring out from inside, accompanied by the noise of choking and whimpering.

Din barrels through the doorway as recklessly as ever.

In one corner of the room, hidden behind a deactivated gonk droid, is the child, one hand extended. In the middle, the devaronian and the boss are both clutching at their throats with one hand and struggling to aim their guns at the child.

Din shoots them in the back without hesitation, two neat bullets catching them between the left shoulder blade and the spine. The devaronian struggles more in testament of endurance for her race, but between the child and Din, there isn’t anything she can do to get out of the situation.

He walks between her and the child, barely feeling her shots as they skid off of his breastplate uselessly, and he whispers, "Shh, let me do it. Let me."

The kid slumps down behind the droid, away from sight entirely.

At the same time, the alien drops to the floor, a horrible moan of pain escaping her throat at the impact. Din turns to her, ice and fire both in his chest, and puts an end to her misery.

He kneels down toward the child and reaches toward it gently. "I'm here," he says and finally takes it in his arms. 

The way the child cries, it sounds like a series of individual yelps of pain and distress, more intense than his usual way of demanding attention. Din never wants to hear these sounds from his child ever again. The hole he didn't realize he had in his stomach disappears now that he's holding the kid in his arms so tightly and so safely, but another grows in his chest, worry and sadness that this poor creature keeps suffering, even under his care.

He has to do better.

A smidge of blood stains the side of his vambrace where the child is holding on and his eyebrows fly up in alarm. Din checks over its body for injuries, breathless.

"Did they hurt you?" he asks, bringing the child closer to his helmet. They stare at each other for a few seconds, the child calmer now. It places a hand over Din's helmet and taps on it a few times, insistently.

"Let's get our stranger to the medbay," he suggests lightly.

On the way back to the control chamber, Din encounters two stragglers, who are both beyond confused by what is going on. They probably don't even recognize they've been shot until Din is long gone from their vicinity.

He finds the stranger a few paces away from where he left him, a smudged trail of blood behind him.

"I told you to stay put," Din admonishes him, if only to get his growing alarm under control.

The stranger stirs, lifting his head weakly toward Din's general direction. "Mando?" His voice sounds even weaker than he looks, but it is quiet and hopeful. "The ch—the child," he rasps out, trying to sit up.

"The child is safe."

"Mando," he repeats in relief, letting his head drop back down. "Stay with me until I—"

"Do you always talk this much when you’re injured? I'm taking you to the medbay."

It's difficult to juggle the kid  _ and _ pull the stranger up without worsening his injury, but Din doesn't want to put either of them down just yet. He grunts underneath the stranger's weight—moving him from the floor jars his body enough that he slumps bonelessly over Din's arm.

He follows the signs on the walls and somehow gets to the medbay in one piece. There doesn't seem to be anyone else on the ship, but he keeps checking for heat signatures every couple of seconds, just in case.

Inside the medbay—which in truth is barely big enough to fit two grown men and a plain stretcher—Din sets the stranger down on the stretcher and activates the medical droid. With shaky hands and bloodied fingers, he inputs a whole body scan and instructs the medical droid to proceed as per its own protocols.

Once the droid is operational, Din has to step back to give it some space. The child whimpers again at his feet and hides behind his legs when the droid passes them by.

"It won't hurt you," he reassures it. Taking the child once more in his arms, he turns around and walks a few steps further down the corridor until it cannot see the contraption anymore. As much as he needs to see what it will do to his friend, the child has been through too much.

He keeps one hand around the child's head, massaging slow circles into its skin with his thumb. Like this, it feels tinier than ever, and though more capable of defending itself, Din feels like he has to protect it now more than ever.

The ship is off course, floating in space like they were before the pirates boarded them. Its engines are quiet, stable, only noticeable because of the grave silence Din left in his wake. Above this silence, there is a radio working somewhere beyond many walls, heavily muffled, and there is the noise the medical droid is making as it is tending to the stranger's wounds.

Time loses part of its meaning as they wait. Glad that the child is safe in his arms, Din focuses on it and talks to it quietly, not really telling it anything of importance, but the stream of words keeps both of them grounded. The child listens to his voice like it understands, like it knows  _ him _ and, perhaps, like it knows how much he's grown to care for its well being.

"You need a name, kitty," he says, staring down at it fondly. 

_ I don't want to take away your legacy, _ he thinks,  _ but your parents may never see you again. _

Quietly, he asks without expecting an answer, "Who are you?"

***

"Operation complete."

Din shakes out of his stupour and runs back to the medbay within the blink of an eye. The droid turns to him neutrally, its non-blinking led lights mounted on the forehead unnerving to stare at. Din's stance on droids is very complicated, but well on its path of improvement, especially in moments like this.

"Report," he demands. He sneaks a glance at the stranger before looking back at the droid.

Without the bloodied clothing, the man doesn't look as alarmingly close to death as before. His chest is falling and rising slowly as he slumbers on in this medically induced sleep. Bandages hold his ribs together, some bruising finding its way outside the white circle. The patch where the gunshot wound is is a stark white beacon against his dark skin, and if Din knows anything about fatal wounds, this one had the potential of being much worse than it is. His left arm is positioned across his chest and held in place by a roll of bandages encompassing his limb and going over his opposite shoulder.

The droid begins in quite a monotonous voice: "Unconscious 40 year old male patient presenting multiple lacerations on his face, neck, arms and trunk, a severe blaster wound on his right flank, and a dislocated left shoulder has been stabilized." 

Din listens, not quite following any of the details once the droid starts explaining the medical acts it performed.

"My protocol and data shows there is no need for further interventions," it says, after a good minute of technical talk. "Expected recovery: two weeks."

"How long until he wakes up?" Din asks.

"One hour," the droid says.

"Thank you."

"This is my job."

The droid returns to its case mounted into the wall and enters sleeping mode automatically.

Din closes his eyes and just stands there for a few seconds, catching his breath. 

Before he leaves the room, he brushes the back of his fingers over the side of the stranger's face. It makes the man stir—just a fraction, but it is enough to send Din out of the medbay, clenching his hand as if it burned.

***

Razor Crest's ramp needs to be replaced, and unfortunately for them, the pirates' ship doesn’t have any good materials for the job. It probably hasn’t been used as intended for years.

Taking advantage of the time it takes the stranger to wake up by himself, Din explores the area, as eerie as it is in its current state, and loots whatever seems worthy of interest or potentially pawnable. He ends up counting two thousand credits in cash scavenged from the crew's corpses, and finds a larger stash in what might have been the boss' cabin.

On his ship, he makes sure to secure the items in the cargo hold and move all the valuables up the ladder. By the time he is done scrubbing away the blood on the floor, enough time has passed that he goes to fetch the man from the medbay.

They pile up in the cockpit, having no choice but to travel like that now that more than half of the ship is a flying hazard.

The stranger—"When did you fix the nav?"

Din shrugs. "The error was repaired automatically. I left the scan running while I saved you two. We also have an extra seventy-two hundred credits and a bag of gemstones that look precious enough to return a hefty sum."

"Multitasking…" He shakes his head and laughs as lightly as his injury allows.

"Are you complaining?"

"No, no, not at all. Merely impressed by how well you hold yourself together, Mando."

Half-turned to them, Din watches in silence as the child hovers by the stranger’s side, tripping over its tiny feet in the folds of the blanket.

"I’m alright," the man says. 

The child coos in protest. 

Din catches the exact moment the child tries to climb on the man and ends up pressing down on his wound instead.

"Ow! It still hurts, kid, don't step on me."

Laughing silently to himself, Din turns back to the control board. Exhaustion is finally catching up with him, but he can go on a while longer, now that everyone is safe. 

It feels like entire days and weeks have passed since they last stood here, throwing such different words at each other.

Now there is relief in the air, and comfort, and Din is still tired of the fruitless labour of making others understand his ways, but for this man, he realizes he wants to try again and again.

He keeps his back to them as he speaks. "You don’t have to tell me anything."

"Mando?"

"My name is Din."

He does trust him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mando solved things pretty peacefully last chapter, so this time around I channeled the vibes from that wonderful scene from S1 when he's stalking Mayfeld on the prison ship. ♥ 20+k words later we have ONE name! How much longer until the other?
> 
> Some other notes: If you're wondering why I'm referring to the child as 'it' instead of 'he', it's because I don't like how they automatically assume Grogu is male. We don't even know what his species is called. What do they know to call Grogu 'he'?? Also I'm aware of some minor formatting errors in the previous chapters regarding the quotation marks. I'll fix them at some point... until then, I'm making sure everything appears uniformly from now on.
> 
> This story will have around 17 chapters, if I follow my current outline. My draft's at #12 and things are getting harder to write... the plot thickens and I cannot wait to share the rest with y'all!!
> 
> Also I started playing Jedi Fallen Order today and umm 100% recommend !! Cal Kestis has no right being that wholesome!
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! As always, you can find me on good ol' [Tumblr](https://maderilien.tumblr.com/) :3c


	6. All That Memory Holds

Din.

Boba doesn’t repeat it outloud. 

Doesn’t say anything at all, in fact, but neither does Mando, so for a minute, the echo of this name hangs in the air heavily, like a secret which should never see the light of day, but now that it has, it binds its witnesses in silence.

He wants to speak, to offer something of his own, but everything he has is tangled up in a mess that will unravel and fall apart at the slightest touch. Perhaps this weight he carries is visible to others—how else could Mando be so kind as to offer him the gift of privacy, if not out of pity for his miserable self-isolation? He must look like a Kaminoan nautilus without its shell, curled up in its burrow and blending in with the sand, too afraid to lift its head and try to replace it.

Mando accepts his lack of reaction with far more grace than Boba deserves. The subject is not so much dropped as it is left to linger while Mando inputs the coordinates of their next destination.

It’ll be a wonder if they make it to their target in one piece, considering the way the ship groans every other minute.

An alarming rattling noise from the cargo hold prompts Boba to break the silence.

“This ship needs to be looked at by a professionist,” he says, eyeing the floor with concern.

The child, glued to his side, looks down as well, then back up at his face inquisitively.

“The child agrees.”

“We can’t afford to delay this quest for much longer,” Mando says.

“Hmm, I admit dying via crash landing sounds more appealing than letting my adversaries shoot me. Wouldn’t want to give anyone the pleasure of defeating me.”

Mando swivels around in his chair to, presumably, glare at him.

It is a very blank, very Mando-esque stare.

“Hand me that holopad, I’ll find someplace on the way.” Boba holds out his hand, palm up and demanding.

“Or else?”

“I’ll wrestle you out of that chair and pilot it myself.”

Mando huffs. “With your injuries?”

“I’m sure I’ll manage. I’ve beaten you before.”

“Here.” Mando gives him the device, shaking his head tiredly.

“Ah, so you accept defeat! Honourable.”

The bone-weary sigh Mando lets out deserves an award in itself.

Course set, Mando abandons the pilot’s chair and joins them on the floor, a mere couple of paces away from the controls. It’s a tight fit with so many items surrounding them, but it shouldn’t be so for much longer. Once the ship is repaired, things will go back to normal. Until then, while Boba is content to recharge his batteries and simply  _ rest _ for a few hours, Mando seems to find himself eager to work and put this time to good use.

He unclasps one of his pauldrons and starts wiping it down with a rag. Within reach he has a bottle of rust solvent, which he applies after the initial dirt is removed from the metal.

Boba watches him work for a while, lost in thought, only superficially aware of Mando moving through several pieces of his armour as time passes.

"Tell me something, Mando," Boba says, voice low enough that he doesn’t disturb the child slumbering nearby. "Was the kid the bounty you messed up on?"

The Mandalorian stops cleaning his equipment in a rather telling sign.

"When you said you were avoiding the Guild, I didn’t realize there was a bounty on your head as well."

"Some Imps want the child," Mando answers, weary beyond his years. He returns to scrubbing the beskar, but his shoulders stay tense in one hard line. "They want to experiment on it or dissect it—I don’t know and I don’t want to either."

Boba looks at the green blob sadly. Could it be related to the Jedi Master Yoda after all? Beside that one Jedi, for all his travels, Boba has never seen another member of this species in the entire universe until now.

_ What a lonely existence, _ he thinks.

The new information makes more sense, in that case. That brief moment when the child lifted the metal ball in the air could have been a display of their Jedi wizardry. Is their entire kind attuned to that magic? Why else would the Empire want this creature?

"I’m not going to let them touch it," says Mando.

"Could you live on the run for the rest of your life?"

"If I reunite it with its family, perhaps they could protect it better than me."

A weight settles over Boba’s shoulders. 

The Empire, the Separatists, the Republic, it doesn’t matter who dabbles in science, what matters is that the act itself does not come to pass. He clenches his fists at his sides. He knows what it means to live in a laboratory—sterile corridors, endless people that look like him, discipline ordained through science. Independence curbed artificially.

_ ‘You’re my son,’  _ said his father once, in a memory so deeply ingrained in him that he doesn’t think he will ever forget it. What about all the other children bearing Boba’s face? What were they for? What makes him so different?

Mando puts on his now-sparkling pieces of armour, looking for all intents and purposes like a new man. He walks over the pile of items crammed with them in the cockpit, those in most danger to fall off the ship while en route, and he takes out the green Mandalorian armour that used to define the very name of Boba Fett.

The helmet is rusty beyond belief, though the colour holds. The dent left by Boba’s altercation with Cad Bane years ago is still there, a testament of how little Boba cared for its appearance. At some point he thought it sparked fear in his targets, to see him coming with such confidence and living proof that no bullet can bypass his magnificent Mandalorian armour, so he left it there untouched, but seeing it now so neglected, he thinks it pathetic. 

Without his father, Mandalore is nothing to him. Any hero that may have lived died the day Jango died, lost to time alongside Jango’s tales of honour and glory.

Mandalorians have always been at war—with the Jedi, with the Republic, with the Empire—and above all they have always fought among themselves, each clan so addicted to justifying its ideals and imposing them on the rest that it has led to Mandalore’s ruin.

When the Great Purge happened, Boba was busy playing Lord Vader’s right hand man, and it suited him just fine. These people who schemed with the Jedi and sold his father into slavery were not people he kept in his thoughts. To not only disrespect the Mand’alor, but to deny him his culture and slander his name thereafter? If that is what it means to be Mandalorian, Boba is not one of them.

Across from him, sitting cross-legged with the helmet resting on one of his knees, Mando struggles to remove some of the rust stains on its metallic surface.

"Did you know the Mandalorian this armour belonged to? Is that why you want it?" Mando asks.

In a moment of weakness, Boba says, "Yes."

"Can you tell me more about them?"

"His name was Jaster Mereel," Boba answers quietly, watching the Mandalorian for any reaction. There is none and Mando’s continued ignorance of Mandalore’s history proves to be a blessing, in the end. "He saved my father when my father was a child."

It’s not Jaster Mereel’s entire armour that Mando has scattered around him, only the helmet, taken to replace his father’s, which Boba… 

Well. 

Lost.

"I was rescued by a Mandalorian too," Mando says. "Separatist droids were laying waste on my home when the Mandalorians intervened."

Boba cocks his head to a side and regards him in a new light. 

So different their paths are, yet at their core, a Mandalorian or another stands as guardian. He still doesn’t know what faction this particular Mandalorian is part of—their politics do not interest Boba beyond the occasional target Lord Vader pointed him at in their better years—but these strong family values resonate with one tiny part of him, the part which commemorates his father teaching him their words and their traditions and their identity.

"What do you know of Mandalore?"

Mando shrugs, bringing the helmet closer to his face and rotating it in the light. There is little difference to the metal, except for some extra shine in the areas that escaped the brunt of the sarlacc’s teeth and fluids.

"We can never go back home,” Mando says after a while. “The Empire—"

"The Empire did nothing," Boba butts in, annoyed. It’s always the Empire this, the Empire that in this Galaxy, but when it comes to Mandalore, some things they did with their own hands. "Those of Mandalore who cared for our—for it, they were exiled. Whatever the Empire found when it got there, it’s not what you think."

"That doesn’t change anything. The Great Purge decimated us. Now we live in the shadows, without a home, hiding our identities."

And therein lies the crux of the matter. Why is Boba even looking for Slave I so ardently? Is it simple sentimentality hidden behind metal shaped like home? 

Years have passed since Geonosis, when Boba picked a side and continued the wrong legacy of his father. Why does this longing resurface now? 

There is nothing left, neither to avenge nor to take revenge upon.

The Jedi are dead. His main employer is dead also. 

_ He _ was dead, for a while. 

A ghost in the desert.

These objects remain in the vastness of space: a helmet, a jetpack, the traces of Mandalorian design left behind by an exiled man. A ship pawned off from collector to collector, lost to the whims of wealthiest members of the Underworld.

Home, to an extent.

Perhaps the only one he’s ever known.

"Who are you?" Mando asks. He’s moved on to the breastplate, which he sets down briefly to stare at Boba.

He doesn’t need to think about it. There’s nothing at the core. Nothing. "I don’t know. I was a bounty hunter for some time, but now I’m just… outliving myself."

"It sounds lonely."

Boba laughs emptily. "We can’t all have a greater purpose and save younglings from the hands of the Empire."

“It’s not a purpose,” Mando replies firmly. “It’s a choice I made. Anyone could make this choice.”

“Even I?” Boba asks, not unkindly, but he cannot hold back the derision in his voice.

“Even you.”

Mando is too confident in his answer. So confident it almost convinces Boba to agree with him, but the doubt in his heart is not one to give in so easily.

_ Would you think the same if you knew who I was? _

***

The Wheel space station from the Abrion system is, reviews say, a faint replica of the Wheel in Besh Gorgon. Beyond the mandatory shops every space mall center should have, there is little else noteworthy about it, save for its affinity to attract trouble. Any densely frequented place in the Outer Rim holds the same probability for violence and crime, but the Wheel in particular has seen Hutts, Imperials, and unskilled bounty hunters all have their go at destroying this local conglomerate of entertainment and fine goods.

"Unskilled bounty hunters?" Mando repeats, amused.

Boba fiddles with the holopad until it reveals the Abrion Wheel’s page for wanted criminals and people banned from entry.

"Hmm… Baash and Raam, it says here. Some iktotchi individuals," he says, skimming over the page. "Wait."

Among the mugshots updated on the galactic web, Boba sees the unmistakable face of Dengar, head wrapped in bandages. He laughs out loud, and returns to the top of the page to read the entire piece.

"What?"

"Listen, listen," Boba begins and clears his throat, "a Hutt sent out the iktotchi and Dengar to settle some business with the, uhh, Freemaker siblings, but they destroyed the Freemakers’ workshop instead and caused important damage to the area. They are now banned for life."

"Dengar? That sounds vaguely familiar. Let me see," Mando demands, leaning over the side of his chair and turning toward Boba. "Yes, I recognize him. He’s still alive?"

The dismissive, mildly surprised tone in which Mando asks that falls like a bucket of icy water of Boba. 

"What? What do you mean?"

"Uh..."

"Dead?"

_ I’m the only one supposed to be dead. _

"I mean," Mando looks at him blankly, making some gestures with one hand that don’t really explain anything. "I heard some Guild members say he vanished around the same time Fett died."

For a second time, he is doused in ice. To hear his name spoken by this voice… 

Mando misinterprets the expression on his face, because he asks with genuine goodwill, "Didn’t you know? Boba Fett is dead."

"I might have missed it," Boba replies, strained. "Word reaches the Dune Sea a tad slower than other places."

***

The famous Freemaker Salvage & Repair business is still in place. 

Once Razor Crest lands (a very undignified, embarrassing landing which sends a couple of parts scattering over the floor of the hangar), Mando goes to close a deal with the manager. The human in charge, a young woman with brown hair and a lot of muscle attesting to her profession, takes out a clipboard and the two bargain for several minutes, while gesturing toward the ship every couple of seconds. Another employee starts a preliminary check-up, looking over Razor Crest more closely.

Boba is still sore from his stint on the pirate ship. He watches the proceedings through the window for a minute or two, then dresses with some difficulty, the stitches on his side pulling at his skin uncomfortably as he dons on another layer over his shirt. Picking up the child in his arms, he joins Mando outside.

"I’m going to stock up on food," he says. To the child, he whispers conspiratorially, "Let’s see if there’s anything interesting on this two-star shopping place."

Mando takes him a few steps away from the employees and leans closer to him to whisper a simple, “Be careful.”

“Got it.”

Armed with a knife in his boot, two guns strapped to his belt, and a hastily put together shopping list, Boba winks at him before he heads toward the exit of the hangar.

"Excuse me, sir," a metallic, high-pitched voice pops up behind Boba, "I overheard you. The marketplace is on the left, sir."

Boba turns, comes face to face with an ancient B1-battle droid unit, and almost jumps out of his skin at the unexpected sight.

"Thanks," he mumbles back, eyes wide.

"No problem!" the droid exclaims, overly joyous to be of assistance. It gives him a mock salute, then walks toward the ship.

The child reaches out toward the door, eager to explore.

“Wait, wait, let’s watch this,” Boba says, looking at the battle droid scuttling over to the manager, sunny disposition and all. 

It asks something that has her nodding eagerly. Then, just as Mando is about to take notice of the newcomer, the child slaps a hand over Boba’s cheek and distracts him.

They make eye contact and the child points to the door again.

Looking back at the ship, the moment is lost: Mando is discussing the ship with Miss Freemaker again.

Boba sighs. "Yeah, yeah, let’s go.”

The Wheel is a busy place. A good number of customers are traversing the corridors, moving from shop to shop with the slow, meandering gait of people looking to indulge their eyes more than their wallet. Despite the controversial ratings and reviews, this place seems like it’s doing a good job of providing the surrounding systems with plenty of entertainment and items, because the clientele ranges from gangs of youths to entire families with their children in tow, all in constant flux. Boba blends in with the crowd, just another scarred face in the universe, and goes left, as per the droid’s instructions.

Small stalls are set up along the walls of this level of the Wheel, their vendors standing next to their wares and announcing various offers and one-in-a-century chances to buy this or that. Boba isn’t particularly curious, but it becomes rapidly obvious that his opinion doesn’t count for anything. The child sees enough from its vantage point, where it’s leaning over Boba’s left shoulder, and it keeps tapping on his cheek to get his attention. There is a lot of shiny stuff in these stalls and Boba soon realizes this simple grocery run might take a while longer.

They stop at one such table laden with miniature robots, no taller than one palm.

"Welcome, welcome! We have the best toys this side of the Outer Rim, sir," the alien merchant exclaims the very instant Boba slows down near their table.

"No doubt," he mutters lowly, unimpressed. "Is that an AT-AT Walker?"

"A fine target for our Rebellion fighters to destroy!" The alien shows him a set of poorly rendered X-wings, but which, despite the atrocious design, do unfold their wings in a pathetic resemblance to the original.

"We’re just looking, thanks," Boba says. At the very same time, the child reaches out toward the X-wing, letting out a noise of interest. "Nope, none of that, kitty."

"I’ll be here if you change your mind!" the vendor says.

The child demands to see more items, and toys, and food, and Boba bears through it all rather heroically, if only because they are still heading toward the food market, thus making some progress. He can’t remember for sure if he was as demanding as this creature, but to be fair, his father didn’t take him to shopping malls for leisure.

With that thought in mind, Boba decides to slow down somewhat and let the child have its fill in sight, if not in possession, of these sparkly, attractive items.

"Listen, I will buy you one single toy, alright? We don’t have money to spare, nor the space on the ship. You are aware we have no space, aren’t you?" He tickles the underside of the child’s chin and huffs when all it does is squeak at him. "What do you know? You’re shorter than my boot. There’s enough space for  _ you." _

They stop by another stall, this one selling some sort of stuffed toys. Boba takes one little loth-cat toy in his hands and shakes it in front of the child’s face.

"Just like you. Big head, stringy arms."

The child reaches for it; when its hands touch the soft material, it hugs the toy close to its chest.

"Do you like that one then? Are you sure? Look, there’s more. Don’t regret it."

The child looks at the rest with a modicum of interest, content to hold the cat in its arms. The vendor, an old togruta with long, wrinkly lekku trailing down his front, waits patiently for them to decide on an item. The rest of the toys are just as cute, but the attachment has already formed.

Transaction done, Boba and the child go on.

Really, Boba wouldn’t have minded if his father had taken him to such a place.

Closer to the market, the smell of food brings with it a stab of hunger in both their stomachs. A horned alien is selling Kashyyykian snakes on a stick, which Boba is not particularly fond of, but the child gravitates toward with almost palpable craving. For himself, Boba finds some small dumpling with vegetables—of unknown origin, but edible, if rather salty overall.

The crowd is double in size in this area. Voices in many different languages call to the customers’ attention, listing prices and items as attractively as they can. Boba has a clear idea of what they need until their next destination, so he doesn’t linger long, lest the child get more ideas. It takes less than half an hour to arrange several food deliveries to be made back to the Freemaker hangar, much to Boba’s relief that he doesn’t have to carry anything beside the child.

On the way back to the ship, they pick a different route and indulge their eyes on a new set of trinkets and devices. Boba is more interested in them this time around, as the offer includes things like stim capsules, useful quick-repair tools to have on-hand on a ship, survival kits, and medical pack supplies, to name a few. 

Loth-cat in hand, the child stares over Boba’s shoulder at the people passing them by, and sometimes stares at him without saying a word, moments which Boba chooses to acknowledge each time with a little smile in reply, before he returns to his haggling.

One stray item catches his attention in particular. 

The child plays with whatever it can find on the ship, meaning: scrap metal, strings, Mando’s cape. Beside the stuffed toy, which should help it have proper fun as a child deserves, there is little else for it to use that is age-appropriate.

He beelines toward the stall. 

A box no larger than two hands’ length stands at the forefront of the wares. ‘Kiri’s Little Artist,’ it says on the package, and underneath it boasts a collection of fifty sheets of parchment of the highest quality, five black pencils, a handful of coloured ones, and, on top of all that, even a handy device acting as both sharpener and eraser.

"How much for this?" Boba asks, already taking the credits pouch out of his pocket.

"Sixty credits," the merchant drones bored.

He pays quickly then secures the box under his non-child-occupied arm.

The act of pushing pencil on paper—that physical sensation of the tip scratching the page and leaving colorful marks behind? All children should experience it. Even surrounded by tons of water and storms, in a place so technologically advanced that the lowest cleaning droids were capable of higher functions, even there Jango Fett made sure his son had something to do with his hands when he was away on his hunts. 

That simple act of creation… 

"This may not look like much, but I promise you, you will enjoy it," Boba whispers wistfully.

***

Razor Crest is a certified mess when the two of them return from their trek. The broken ramp is resting near a large dumpster; in its stead, the Freemaker mechanics are working on installing another piece, brand new and far more trustworthy-looking than the entire rest of the ship. If they had had those credits from Hondo Ohnaka, perhaps they could have really polished Razor Crest. Boba doesn't bring it up when he sees Mando, but does think it rather vindictively.

The man in question is within reach of the ship, but out of the way, sitting on a crate and busy reading something on the holopad, occasionally checking the area before focusing on the text once more. He catches sight of Boba and the child during one such glance and walks up to them at once.

"I found a good brand of canned food which will be delivered here in two hours," Boba tells him. He looks at the mess of ship parts all over the floor and adds, "I assume we will still be here by then."

"Thank you," Mando says. His eyes fall upon the child (and the newly acquired toy) and he tilts his head slightly. "Did you get blackmailed?"

"If it were about blackmail, there would be  _ only _ toys delivered instead of food and bacta cans."

Mando nods wisely. "I didn't mean to insult your resistance to the child’s persuasion skills."

"The child does need toys, Mando."

"Of course. I didn't say anything."

Boba points a finger at him and shakes his head. "You must think you're really cool with that helmet over your face, always hiding your expression, but I know, Mando,  _ I know, _ you're laughing at me."

***

Razor Crest feels fresh again. The Freemakers didn't replace more than the bits at its entrance, but Boba assists Mando with rearranging the things in the cargo hold and he prides himself on his compartmentalizing skills for good reason: there is space to breathe on this tiny ship and everything is (finally) in its place.

Their stop on the Wheel, despite its reputation and despite the crowds, turned out to be their most uneventful yet.

Boba contemplates the benefits of such a predictable, boring existence as they conclude their business with the Freemakers and set out. A breath of fresh air—if an air full of perfume, sanitizing substances, and dozens of recipes could bring the same peacefulness as a walk in a wheat field. Repairs done, resources replenished, and spirits higher than ever—what more could he ask for in this moment?

The artist’s kit is put to good use as soon as the ship is in hyperdrive.

"Hold it like this," Boba instructs, showing the child how to hold the pencil.

"Perhaps you could cut it in half," Mando suggests, watching them from the side. He has that holopad in his hands again, but the little ruckus the drawing kit is raising is enough to distract him from his work. "Have you seen what tiny hands it has?"

That’s not a bad idea, actually.

"Here." Mando throws him his knife, then forgoes all pretenses, puts the holopad away, and leans closer to them to watch intently as Boba slices one standard pencil in half.

After it is sharpened, Boba presents it to the child like a precious item—and in a way, it is.

The child looks at him emptily for a few seconds. 

Around them, the tension rises as both adults are on the (literal) edge of their seat to see what will come of this endeavour.

The child grabs the pencil and twirls it in its hand until finally it settles in a good grip.

"Yeah! Well done!" Boba gives the child’s head a scratch in between the ears.

It doesn’t take too long after that for the child to catch on the act of drawing. Circles and squiggly lines is all it manages, but from hesitatingly placing the pencil on the page, it quickly grows bold and presses into the parchment with confidence, almost like there is a vision in its head.

Boba watches over him a while longer. The sight both soothes and disturbs a tiny, old wound—if he doesn’t think about the little nook where he stuffed a toy on Slave I, then he can keep himself smiling. If he just doesn’t think of it at all…

"Hey," Mando calls out to him, voice oddly hoarse.

Boba stands and walks over to the passenger seat.

Mando clears his throat before speaking next. He holds the holopad up and shows Boba a transcripted message. "I managed to sync this up with the data we have from that stray team we took out some weeks ago. I think I figured out the precise location of X’in Niang’s base within the Rinn system."

"Are we heading there then?"

The Mandalorian nods.

"Well done," Boba says and pats him on his back.

Mando’s posture stiffens underneath his hand.

"Are you alright? You’re not injured too, are you?"

"No, I’m—I’m fine," he stutters, completely unconvincingly. He stands suddenly, almost knocking into Boba. "I need to eat."

"Ah, in here? I’ll go check on the weapons," Boba says. Before he can step away, Mando reaches out and holds him still by the forearm. Boba says nothing, but his confused look is eloquent enough.

"Stay and pilot the ship."

They switch places. In the pilot’s seat, Boba looks over the controls once before he realizes the course is already set.

"Mando, I don’t need to—"

"Keep an eye on the nav," comes the reply, gruff and serious.

Boba shrugs, but does as instructed, and leans back in the chair, eyes staring ahead at the expanse they’re travelling through. Their speed turns the dots of light into lines, after-images dragging on behind them. A tunnel of starlight, thousands and millions of years away.

It only takes Mando a few minutes to gather his meal and return. 

Noise helps Boba visualize what’s going on behind him. 

Mando places down some bowls and cans of food on the crate, each item letting soft, metallic clanks as they touch the surface of the hardwood, then he approaches the pilot. He hands Boba one piece of newly purchased fruit, something golden with a thick outer shell, before he retreats and sits down with a soft grunt.

The activity attracts the child’s attention soon enough and it starts making noise as it, too, demands a snack before sleep.

Boba listens. He lets the simple sounds chase away some of the thoughts that come to him when he has nothing to focus on. The memory of Slave I’s hidden secrets fades away, but does so gently, without the usual remorse. Sadness, yes, but edging toward the acceptance that there is no going back.

Sometimes, one may know something to be one way or the other, but to truly believe it, it must be the heart to hold this knowledge, not the mind.

There is more than pain in these memories—but perhaps that is precisely why they hurt so much.

He tries to peel the fruit with his hands, a task which proves rapidly ineffective. Mando’s knife is within reach, where Boba left it on the edge of the control board, so he takes it, and, keeping his back to the other two, cuts the fruit into smaller pieces, taking his time to savour each bite.

It’s soothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I mash up the hermit crab and the nautilus for a specific type of imagery? Yeah. What about it? Slave-I looks like a nautilus shell, you can't change my mind.
> 
> This chapter has the feel of a filler episode but I swear it was harder to write than the rest and it turns out a lot more is going on than previously expected. I _needed_ my space mall episode though.
> 
> So I've read that Boba is rumoured to have had three sets of armour, among which one is Jango's and one Jaster's, and I worked with that and made this hybrid that I think makes sense considering he blows up Jango's helmet in the Clone Wars.
> 
> High five @ everyone who has seen LEGO Star Wars the Freemaker Adventures! LEGO Star Wars is genuinely one of my favourite iterations of Star Wars and I will never tire of it. I reference some things from that show in this chapter, but there is no need for previous knowledge to understand these events. Everything relevant is mentioned here.
> 
> I'm trying my best to understand Mandalore-related events, but I'm legit allergic to the Legends Wookieepedia pages. I do not have enough spoons to handle that bag of cats, I apologize. My main sources are the Clone Wars cartoon, the Open Seasons Jango comic, and the comics included in the Boba Fett Omnibus. Not a lot, but @#%$ SW has too much lore in too many places. I love Boba and Jango, not Mandalore OK orz


	7. The Legacy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An update ahead of schedule? In _my_ fic? It's more likely than you think!

Between the stuffed toy and several attempts at art, the child is far easier to manage for a while. It is, admittedly, a short while, but it brings about a welcome respite. There is more to having a youngling on board than simply keeping it fed and out of harm’s way, something which Din had little time to consider before, between all the fighting and the running away.

With the womp rat distracted, calm settles over the ship. It gives Din a moment’s self-reflection to realize he’s close to burning himself out, despite their journey being not even halfway done.

Their findings don’t amount to much, but the elusive Madame Xi’n won’t stay that way forever. She might be the one to hold the key to their problems or she might be another empty lead—a possibility which tires Din out just by considering it. Still, the chain of command leading up to the Collector is taking proper shape, and though far outside his comfort zone, he will keep going forward.

He has become so used to watching over the child that he is almost surprised whenever he remembers only a few months have passed since it arrived in his care. Their arrangement is not permanent—this he knows best, although thinking about the bounty that has started him on this path makes him hesitate nowadays. There is no regret in his decision, never that, but his confidence wavers. Could he truly fulfill the Armourer’s request?

She gave him two options, both equally difficult: return the child, or raise it himself. As the chance of reaching another Mandalorian covert through the Madame’s intel appears on the horizon, Din finds himself looking back at the road not taken and he wonders—what if?

What if he is selfish and doesn’t let go?

He blinks, snapping out of his reverie. Sharp, violent pain travels down his neck to his collarbones as he tries to lift his head from his hand and it freezes him momentarily.

A soft ‘bah’ comes from the panel by his feet, prompting Din to open his eyes and look down.

Twin black eyes look back at him intensely from the cramped space between the floor, the control board and Din’s boots. Only the child’s head is visible, as well as one of its tiny hands, gripping Din’s trousers imperceptibly.

"Come here," the stranger whispers. "Don’t wake him."

The child bends down, picks up a green pencil from the floor, then scuttles away obediently.

It’s not only the child burrowing in-between his ribs that is turning into an issue.

The strange, beguiling man Din picked up on Tatooine is also carving his own space in Din’s daily life, though when it comes to _this_ matter, Din is entirely the one at fault. 

Does he fully know what he’s doing? Perhaps only as much as he knew what hardship would follow when he decided to rescue the child from the Client. It didn’t stop him then and it won’t stop him now, to open his arms to the unknown. There is good in this darkness and he wants to witness it when it steps into the light.

***

As they enter the Rinn system, Din and the stranger spend more and more time planning out their next move. There is plenty of reconnaissance to be done, seeing as they have no idea what is waiting for them planetside, but since Din has started to think of this man from the desert as someone he can count on to _be_ there for the entirety of this quest, he finds himself more than eager to strategize.

"The coordination we had back on Mizi was pure luck," Din says. "I’d rather we had some signals next time, so we don’t rely on guessing and mind-reading."

The stranger frowns upon hearing these words. "I certainly do not want that. What do you propose?"

"I’m open to suggestions," Din replies rather diplomatically. The last person Din worked with so closely was his father (second, loved as much as the first) and their technique involved less subtlety, as the jobs they went on were of a different caliber.

With an intriguing blend of reluctance and regret, the stranger explains to him a few hand signals and a couple of words in a foreign language.

Din startles upon hearing them. 

It sounds almost like Mando'a, but it isn't. Not quite.

He knows the man was tangled up in bounty hunting before and this only makes him want to dig deeper. He doesn't dare, not in this moment, when he is finally allowed to glimpse into the dark, and perhaps he never will, out of fear and worry in equal parts that he would alienate his friend, but patience is a lesson he knows well. One he’s been practicing even better lately.

He can wait.

He _will_ wait.

It takes them half an hour. Din repeats basic terms like those for 'help,' 'enemy,' 'advance,' and 'retreat,' all the while the stranger sits back in one of the passenger seats listening and correcting him tirelessly.

The code has enough in common with Mando'a that Din doesn't have as much trouble memorising them as he lets on, but the casual conversation they've got going keeps him playing the fool, if only to be corrected again and again—as many times as the man's temper allows.

Once planet Staco is within sight, small and shockingly red, second in revolution around the Rinn system sun, the stranger straightens up and starts picking apart their intel. It starts out as a perfectly composed background check on planet Staco and Madame Xi’n, but it doesn’t take long until it turns into a contained mess of muffled curses.

"I don’t like going in like this," the stranger says. "There is nothing on this person’s identity on the holopad. This region doesn’t have good holonet coverage either. All I’ve been getting are wedding ads."

"Wedding ads?" Din can’t help the incredulity in his voice. "I thought you were good with technology?"

"I _am,_ there is simply nothing more to go on than her name… or codename or whatever it is." He puts down the device with a huff and folds his arms across his chest in clear distaste. Not even half a minute passes before he reaches for the holopad again, turning on the search function with firm, annoyed taps on the screen, and inputting another string of keywords.

Din watches him struggle, mildly amused. "Don’t break it."

"Like it would make any difference."

"Don’t blame it on the kid if you do."

"You let your kid take the ship apart before I came along," the stranger says, throwing Din a sideways glance.

They stare at each other, the stranger slowly turning to face him fully.

"I think it is rather well behaved now, wouldn’t you agree?" he asks as he turns around further and looks down at the child.

Din watches him instead for a few moments longer, eyes tracing the lines of his profile, already so familiar that he seeks out the scar cutting into the man's bottom lip. It's tiny and easy to miss despite its location, but the light falls just so from above that a small shadow marks its existence.

How uneven would it be to touch?

The shadow reshapes itself, pulled back by the smile growing on the stranger's face.

For all his penchant to joke and to add sarcasm where it is not needed, this man does not often smile like he means it. There is always something colouring his lips or his eyes or his brows, something to require further description: sardonic, self deprecating, empty. Rarely is it simply a smile.

It's just a smile now.

An ocean of emotion swells within Din in this brief interlude, made the more difficult to bear when he sees the reason behind the smile—a few paces away from their seats, surrounded by three sheets of paper full of squiggly lines, the child sits hunched over a fourth, hard at work.

***

The sky is red and the air thick with a fine powder that stains the Razor Crest in a gentler hue as they descend. When the ship lands, a whole cloud of it lifts up around them angrily, lingering for a long time before it settles.

The moment the ship touches solid ground, the stranger springs from his seat and leans over the control board, pressing his face to the window. 

Skimming over the preliminary scans, Din calls out, "Unbreathable atmosphere." 

This complicates things.

"Are we in the right place?" asks the man.

"Yes," Din says, but looks over the transcripts again to make sure. "We are. Planet Staco, about three klicks away from the target."

"Great. I don't suppose you have an extra breathing mask laying around?"

"No. I'll scout the area, there must be a settlement around here. I guess you should—"

"—stay with the ship and the kid," the stranger finishes with a sigh. "I figured."

"I won't be long." Or, at least, Din will try.

***

Din's breathing filter is a custom piece he obtained at least a decade ago on a long, arduous mission that involved chasing a bounty all across the toxic plains of Helix IX. His helmet’s built-in filters are good, but not infallible.

He fits it neatly underneath the helmet; the materials it is made out of are light and pleasant to touch, so it isn't irritating to wear, though his face heats up way more with it in between his skin and the beskar.

Equipped for the hazards outside, he exits the Razor Crest with his guard up, already scanning for heat signatures. 

They've landed on a patch of red dirt between a steep hill and a couple of trees, well out of sight unless someone would be looking for them in particular.

Small critters scuttle around on the ground in the dust—the only traces of movement he picks up.

There seems to be no other form of life nearby. In fact, most of the land feels deserted.

At the top of the hill, Din stands higher than the native vegetation.

This particular area is made up of pointy hills scattered as far as the eye can see, intersped with gnarly trees growing from the flat areas between each hill. At the tip of their crowns, the branches tangle up with one another to form a solid horizontal wall of nature, shielding the ground from the rays of the sun. A thick blanket of red dust lies heavily on the surface of the trees, threatening to fall at any moment.

He crosses the hill, descends on the other side, and walks on through this marvellous and alien forest, awestruck by his surroundings. 

Strange high-pitched cries echo from the depths of the wilderness, too far away for him to see what animal is making them. It’s eerie enough to keep him with one hand on his gun the entire time.

For the better part of an hour, there is nothing to observe but the dust hanging in the air like a thin shawl spanning all the way from the treetops to the roots. Some of it falls on his armour and builds up over time on his shoulders and his cape despite his efforts to brush it off. 

Beyond the dust, the forest is a sea of shadows, with rare strips of sunlight filtering through.

He doesn’t notice the buildings until he trips over a set of carved steps. 

Such a haze surrounds him that he can barely discern anything, least of all what he’s walked into.

Gun drawn, Din looks down at his feet and finds red bricks replacing the ground, so matte that the transition is seamless with the forest floor. He adjusts the settings of his visor, trying to filter out the artifacts and grain created by the dust.

A sharp, oddly melodious cry startles him.

Beside him, materialized out of thin air, stands a tall, long-limbed individual wearing a red body-suit. The shape is humanoid enough, but there is no telling what features this species hides underneath the reflective globe around their head.

"Do you speak Basic?" Din asks without missing a beat. He points his gun to the side in sign of peace.

The grunt he receives in reply sounds like a definite ‘no.’

_"Huttese?"_

With the line of their shoulders rising defensively, the alien tenses up and draws their upper limbs closer to their chest. A set of large, pointy claws pass through the suit at the tip of the fingers, claws which Din does not want to know anything more about other than their existence.

 _"Yes,"_ the alien answers. _"Did Jabba send you? Hutt’s men are not welcome here."_

Very slowly, Din replaces his gun in the holster. He explains himself to the alien; as he talks, more red shapes manifest out of the dust and the trees, all gathering around him and listening to him in unnerving silence.

There isn’t much proof he can offer them of his allegiance to the Tribe, as it seems they don’t know anything about Mandalorians to begin with. It would make little difference to them in any case, so instead he firmly detaches himself from the Hutt crime family.

 _"I’m not working for the Hutts,"_ he says. _"Jabba the Hutt is dead."_

The news brings about a murmur travelling from one end of the group to the other. Small chatter erupts shortly after that, like the sound of music to Din’s untrained ears.

One person breaks apart from the group and steps forward, replacing the first alien. A leader, perhaps?

 _"What do you want?"_ they ask, firm, the flow of their native language carrying over the Huttese consonants and softening them in a way pure Huttese has never felt like.

 _"There is a place I must reach,"_ Din says, pointing toward the general direction of Xi’n Niang’s base. _"I am looking for somebody."_

 _"There is only scum in the city,"_ the leader spits out. _"Come with me."_

Built around the trees, the small forest settlement Din has walked into by accident reveals itself only when its residents wish it so. Strings of light appear out of nowhere, lining their trails and the shapes of their buildings. Suddenly, Din is surrounded by a cluster of activity and life he has not detected before in any way.

The local guides Din to one house in particular, a hundred or so paces deep within the woods.

In the antechamber, at least a dozen red suits hang on the walls on both sides of the entrance. Several shelves are mounted above the suits, bearing small, transparent contraptions that appear to be an original model of breathing masks. 

_"Is it poisonous?"_ he asks.

 _"It builds up inside, clogs the lungs,"_ they reply. _"It wasn’t always like this."_

Din is shown to another room, where a table and some chairs are set up in a corner. Everything is made of ceramic and red bricks, except for the chairs and table set up in the corner, which are made out of wood. Three thin strings of rope connect one side of the room to the other, bearing countless tufts of herbs and roots. More vegetation spreads like mould across the ceiling itself and down the upper half of the walls.

It smells so strongly of greenery that Din gets a whiff of it even with the mask underneath his helmet.

He sits at the table with the leader of the settlement, soon joined by another pair of indistinguishable natives.

 _"What happened here?"_ he asks.

 _"The Hutts mined too deep. They destroyed our world, forced us to live on the surface,"_ says the leader. _"Forced us to work, then threw us aside when there was nothing left."_

 _"And the city?"_

Din looks at each of them in question. His helmet is reflected in the shiny surface of their own, like there are four Mandalorians conversing at the table instead of one.

One of the locals lets out a deep noise of displeasure, which the others echo in a quieter manner.

_"Remnant Hutt scum."_

_"Do you know Xi’n Niang?"_

_"Never heard that name before,"_ the leader says.

Din's shoulders slump involuntarily.

 _"If you plan on travelling there, you should wait for the morning,"_ says another native, making a strange gesture toward him with their clawed hand. _"At night, the void is impenetrable. If you get lost, you may never find your way back to your ship."_

The leader leans closer to him across the table, tilting their head this and that way as they observe him.

_"You have a mask, yes?"_

_"Actually, I need one more."_

_"Hm."_

The money he carries is of no use here, but a trade must be made, so he ends up exchanging three thermal grenades for one breathing mask, a glossy piece of fabric, and one bottle of a solution that the natives advise him to use on his clothes. Whatever the dust is made out of, it sticks well to this concoction and can be safely removed into a water basin.

His side of the trade is received with reverence. Though the people reacted to his presence with distrust and a healthy dose of aggression, he finds that the leader carries the grenades respectfully, fully aware of their moral weight. 

The tension between them and those living in the cities is more than clear. Whatever violence these weapons will bring, Din walks away with a clear conscience.

He is at the edge of their territory, ready to depart, when an alien calls out to him.

_"Stranger, wait."_

He waits for them to catch up then waits again for them to speak.

_"Were you telling the truth?"_

_"About what?"_

_"The Hutt."_ The alien’s hatred is universally translated by their tone alone. _"Jabba."_

 _"Yes,"_ Din says simply. _"Gone."_

The alien is quiet for a minute. 

They don’t leave, so Din doesn’t either. It would be awkward if not for the meditative silence they lapse into, and when the alien sweeps the forest around them with a glance, Din follows suit, curious.

There is red dust, and trees, and houses made of fire and earth. 

There is life—peculiar to him, and peculiar to them also, a people taken out of their environment and thrown into a hazardous existence.

 _"Is he really?"_ They breathe out noisily in the mockery of a laugh. _"Look around and judge for yourself. Perhaps he will be in ten thousand years."_

With that, the native bids him farewell and disappears into the red mist.

***

Din stops several paces away from the Razor Crest and gives himself a moment to simply watch it. 

The newer parts of it come in a stark contrast with the original metal plating—indeed, some of the Razor Crest still bears the manufacturer’s work, with its serial code and stamp hidden on the inside of each segment. He’s had this ship for years now, knows its ins and outs better than he knows himself, sometimes.

It’s strange to return to it knowing that someone is waiting for him. 

Switching his visor to thermal again, he briefly spies on the two freeloaders: somewhere in the cockpit, the stranger is sitting down, leaning to the side. The short bump next to him must be the child. 

The sight puts a smile on Din’s face, mostly because the child is this still only when it is slumbering, and if this man can bring it enough comfort to let it sleep next to him, then Din needs no further proof that he has a trustworthy partner on this quest.

For a while now he’s been putting his trust in him, but his thoughts keep circling back to this idea, each time a pleasant, not unwelcome surprise. 

No, he is not alone right now.

Yes, the child will be safe in his absence while he does his job. 

It’s becoming addicting to have someone watch his back. 

Too used to the Tribe’s ways of resurfacing one at a time, he’s forgotten what it means to work with a team. Din’s stint with Ranzar Malk’s mercenaries years ago was a wild time, but he didn’t quite let his guard down. There was trust in his allies’ skills in battle and in their strategy, but that’s where it ended. 

Here? 

He’s not so sure where it ends anymore.

He boards the Razor Crest at last, grimacing at the red dust flying in after him like a sentient cloud. It may not be toxic to touch, but any amount could be too much for someone of the child’s size.

He sets down his purchases in the cargo hold, then stealthily climbs a few steps up the ladder to get a better look at the sleeping passengers.

The stranger is already watching him silently from the floor. By his side is the child, curled up in a ball and covered by one corner of the stranger’s green poncho.

The man brings a finger to his lips, nodding toward the sleeping child. He disentangles himself slowly from the piece of clothing and bundles the rest of it next to the child, so that it can lean on it and stay warm.

Both of them descend to the cargo hold. 

The stranger reaches out toward Din and brushes the tips of his fingers over his pauldron, leaving trails in the dust clinging to the armour. He brings his hand closer to his face and rubs his fingers together, feeling the texture of the dust and watching it sprinkle to the floor.

"I’m not so sure I want to go outside anymore," he whispers. "Babysitting suits me just fine."

"Tough luck, cause I got a mask for you." Din shows him the item in question. "We’re heading into the city tomorrow. This is old Hutt territory, it seems."

The stranger grimaces. "Those slugs have got their slimy fingers everywhere in the Outer Rim, haven’t they?"

"Looks like it."

"Wait, let me grab a rag, you’re _unsightly_ with that stuff all over you."

Din hands him the cleaning set wordlessly.

The stranger takes it in stride, and continues light-heartedly as he pours some of the liquid on the piece of fabric, "Can’t have our precious Mandalorian look like he rolls around in dirt for fun."

Warmth climbs up to Din’s cheeks. He shuffles his feet on the spot, half in embarrassment, half in agreement, as he watches the stranger moving about.

"Are you making fun of me?" he asks quietly through the smile growing on his face.

The stranger laughs. "Me? I wouldn’t dare."

Then he steps close to Din and brings the cloth over the top of his helmet without warning. 

Din swallows with some difficulty, aware of the tension building up within him. His earlier thoughts haunt him again—this is the novelty of working together with someone else. The need for companionship the child may have tempered with its presence, but could not fully quench due to its age and limited development. Now all this man has to do is stand a step closer to Din and it is enough to show him how much he needed someone by his side.

The dust is easy to remove, requiring just a few sweeps for each segment of his armour, but instead of taking care of the matter himself, Din keeps quiet and lets the man clean the metal undisturbed.

A frown has the man's eyebrows furrowing in concentration.

Din has wondered from time to time, before falling asleep, why this face seems so familiar. He stares and stares, and it's been a good few weeks of their companionship, and still he stares, trying to figure it out.

Is it the nose? The clever, guarded look in his eyes? Or perhaps it is the colour of his dark skin, peppered with scars and old wounds that speak of a past full of adventure and tragedy both.

Din has travelled the galaxy far and wide. The more he’s seen, the larger it has made the world feel around him, and the faces he has met—human, alien, robotic—they have all left an echo in the depths of his mind. 

Maybe it is a target, or a handler, or a Guild member. 

Maybe it is someone he saw before his life changed—a merchant, or a face on the street, or a soldier of the Republic.

Maybe it is no more than Din's growing interest in the stranger, and all the minutes he has spent stealing glances, committing the man's features to memory. 

Maybe it's these minutes turned to hours in his mind, turned neverending in his dreams. 

He's aware of himself enough to know what the fluttering in his stomach means, this feeling like whistling birds are trapped inside and trying to get out. This rush in his ears, this warmth around his neck.

Unaware of the effect he has on Din, the stranger steps even closer.

"So, tomorrow?" he asks, business as usual.

"There is a city further north-east. We should be able to reach it on foot," Din explains (or croaks, rather.) The warmth hugging his throat and the sides of his faces leaves him wrong-footed. "We enter it, see if we can locate the exact place. Scouting, mostly."

"I don’t think we have enough firepower to take on this target," the stranger comments from behind Din. He grips Din’s left arm firmly to keep him in place while the cape and the metal on his back are given a quick sweep down.

Din is hyper-aware of these points of contact, despite the many layers of textile and beskar that separate them. Part of him wants to lean back into the touch, a thought which freezes him to the spot as soon as he becomes aware of it.

It would be so easy, too.

He swallows past the stone lodged in his throat. Gradually, his voice flows more easily and he sounds almost normal when he says, "You don’t know what’s waiting for us out there. Let’s gather our intel first." 

"As you wish."

"Did you have any trouble with the child?"

"I suppose it depends on your point of view," the man says lightly. "We couldn't decide on what colours to use today."

"How about red?" Din offers.

The stranger laughs.

Din has never been more grateful for his helmet than he is right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I don't know, I've had a week... no words. Somehow managed to really focus on this today and I wanted to put it up sooner, so here we are. (✿◠‿◠)
> 
> Are they back on the main quest or is this another detour? Guess you'll have to wait and see. 😊
> 
> Thank you [kaermorons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaermorons) for the idea to use italics! I initially intended to only use it later on but I realized it works well with the implied Huttese in this chapter as well. 🥰🥰🥰


	8. In the Company of Ghosts

Planet Staco is abysmally irritating to transverse. Like snow, sizable chunks of dust fall from the treetops over them as they head toward the city. Boba feels the weight of the dust steadily gathering on top of him, sticking more to the fabric of his cloak than it does to Mando's beskar, and turning it close to unsalvageable within the hour. A Tusken mother had given it to him six months ago, after Boba fended off a group of rascals looking to try out their new weapons in the desert, and he regrets wearing it in this atmosphere.

The sun is rising when they pass over the hill by the ship, its rays fully breaking the line of the horizon and lighting up the sky in rose red and golden warmth. After, they enter the forest, and walk, and walk, and though at some point Mando remarks that the settlement he found yesterday must be close, Boba gets no sight of anything at all.

It is hard to talk through the mask Mando brought back, as it was not fitted for a human to wear. It does its job adequately, but all his words come out muffled, and the effort it takes to be heard properly has him keeping his commentary to himself instead and stew in his growing annoyance. He walks close to Mando, counting down the minutes until they find what they are looking for and depart.

Right when they step into another forestry area, a shrill cry erupts behind them. 

Boba jumps, startled.

"It’s some native creature," Mando says, offering nothing else but a casual glance over his shoulder before he returns to their objective.

‘Some’, as if there could be no danger attributed to it. 

Between the two of them, Mando is the one with first-hand experience with the flora and fauna of Staco, so Boba cannot quite dispute him. Still, he keeps his guard up, especially considering the reduced visibility ahead. 

Mando has his helmet light on, which doesn’t really help except to alert these very creatures of their presence. Boba has his own light source strapped to his belt, but has chosen to keep to the shadows. There is enough to be seen through the haze that he doesn’t break his neck tripping over a random twig or worse. Staying close to Mando is enough.

Mando is paying a lot more attention to his navigator than he is to the surroundings. Every handful of seconds, he checks the tiny screen and corrects their path, as they stray from it without realizing it.

This is all the proof Boba has that they are making any progress at all. The trees look the same, the air looks the same, and the few other hills they've encountered felt rather like they are walking in circles, returning to the edge of the forest again and again.

Eventually, Mando brings up a hand, signaling him to stop.

"We’re close," he says.

A bit of light streams in through the tree trunks ahead. 

The sight, coupled with Mando’s words, instills hope in Boba and they both quicken their pace toward it.

A red hill greets them, same as any of the rest they’ve passed by.

Almost the same.

It rises upward more abruptly than the other hills, appearing more similar to a tall, wide bell placed upon the ground. Soft heaps of dust fall down its slope at regular intervals.

_It is not a hill at all,_ Boba thinks as they walk around its base. 

It is the sheltered entrance to an underground settlement. In the distance, an intermittent yellow light signals them to the presence of life, which, once they get close to it, turns out to be a door.

Mando gives him one blank look in preparation before he braces himself and opens it.

It is like stepping through a portal, from a wasteland into the corridor of a modern facility—not as modern as you would find on the Core Planets, but modern enough. A decontainment chamber is set up between the entrance and the security office, where two helmeted aliens (twi’leks? iktotchi?) are watching them attentively.

“Enter, enter!” shouts one of them. “Don’t let that stuff come in after you!” 

Mando and Boba go forward without question. 

The process takes several minutes, during which translucent misty currents surround them from all sides, sending both his cloak and Mando’s cape flying furiously behind them. The red powder lifts off of their clothes and is absorbed by a matrix set up on the walls.

Once the machinery powers down, they walk to the other side.

It takes a minute longer for Boba’s head to stop buzzing from the procedure.

The two guards stand and meet them at the door, now helmetless, revealing two sets of wide iktotchi horns framing the sides of their face.

"You can take off your masks, travellers," says the taller of the two. She looks them over head to toe critically, though lingers briefly, perhaps with a hint of curiosity in her eyes.

Boba removes his at once, glad to breathe freely and feel cool air on his skin. The scent of mint is strong to the point of irritating the inside of his nose when he breathes in—he grimaces, but at least none of his body is dusted in red anymore.

Mando, predictably, does nothing. This attracts both guards’ attention to him and where there was a polite smile, now there is a hint of disdain.

The first to speak turns to Boba and says, "State your business.”

"Visiting family," he replies simply, returning her stare head on.

The guard narrows her eyes. "Visiting family?"

"That’s right. Anything wrong with that?"

The two iktotchi look at each other for several long seconds.

“You can land through the dome, next time. Spare yourself the walk through these savage trees,” says the second guard. “Watch your step in the city. We have had some casualties among the latest visiting group.”

"Watch yourselves also," stresses the first guard, pointing at them with one finger. "No stealing, no fighting, no murder, to name a few. Be civilized, or you’ll be hearing from us again."

"I appreciate order," Boba tells them evenly. "There will be no trouble from us."

“There better not be.”

***

Beyond the guard’s office lies a short corridor made of reinforced steel walls and bearing little to no decoration. Mando is silent the entire time, closed off. He walks one step ahead of Boba, letting none of his thoughts show on his body—only the fact that he is focused on his task, acting as if he is working alone on this mission.

He opens the door at the end and stops on the threshold.

Boba blinks in surprise at the marvelous sight waiting for them on the other wise: an entire semi-subterranean city, going down and down on a multitude of levels, with the hill dome overhead sprinkled in red. In the center, where the dome is at its peak, a built-in mechanism sweeps down the dust gathered on top and lets clearer sunshine filter through the material.

Despite its location, the place feels very open and light.

A sturdy set of stairs leads down from the entrance to the topmost level of the city, following along the curve of the wall in a gentle descent.

Most of the buildings are the colour of ivory, made more luminous by the sun, and even as Boba leans over the parapet trying to see the bottom level of the city, the descending shadows aren’t diminishing this illusion at all. Compared to the outside, there is clarity here, a testament to the wealth of its residents to afford such filtering systems.

Mando looks at the first set of stairs emptily. Rows and rows of them lead deeper into the earth, each step polished, and the wall to their side decorated with stone carvings of the Hutts.

"What’s wrong?" Boba asks, stepping by his side.

"No stealing," Mando repeats the order they received from the guards and he scoffs, full of disdain.

Puzzled, Boba hopes he manages to convey his confusion on his face enough to warrant an explanation.

Mando shakes his head, sighing so wearily that it only piques Boba’s curiosity further. "Nothing. Let’s move."

***

The coordinates tell them the precise point of Xi’n Niang’s base, but a new problem arises: the city is leveled, and this point passes through many areas on its way to the bottom. Preparing themselves for the long haul, they start with the level closest to the sky and slowly descend as they find no trace of the alien.

Most of the population is made up of iktotchi and humans, with the odd number of other species here and there. Despite the abundantly clear Hutt dominion over this planet, there is no sign of any member of the Hutt clan itself. 

The population stares at Mando shamelessly as they pass through the tiny, narrow streets—it must be the helmet, and not his status as a stranger that is disconcerting to them. Boba, who by all means should be the scarier looking one with the multitude of scars on his face, receives no such glares or shifty eyes. 

It doesn't help that Mando moves through the crowds like the protagonist of a gritty war novel, letting his presence clear the way ahead of him. 

Why, Boba feels strangely good-natured in comparison, which has pretty much never been the case for him.

The first level yields nothing, the second and the third house human families and are clearly residential areas, and the remaining two levels seem like they contain a multitude of storage units, industrial places, and furthest from the sky, the entrance to the mines of Staco.

The architecture of the whole lower half of the city is baffling.

On the third level, they stop by the parapet surrounding the hole toward the fourth and fifth levels, and both stare into the abyss equally intrigued. Boba rests his elbows on the metal baluster separating him from certain death and leans forward until he gets a glimpse of the buildings underneath them, as the fourth level seems to be carved deeply into the stone, and is much wider than what the dome on the surface would suggest.

Mando quickly moves to grab him by the back of his cloak, only to end up choking him a little.

“I’m just looking,” Boba mumbles. "This feels like a tiny bastardized version of Coruscant, only with actual clear air on the bottom levels.”

"I’ve never been to Coruscant," Mando says.

"Eh, you’re not missing out on anything. Posh bastards uptop, simple bastards down below."

In spite of his sour mood, Mando chuckles at his words. 

Boba stands back and elbows him in the side. “Let’s see what’s going on down there.”

***

The coordinates lead them to a warehouse in a whole lot of warehouses. 

Most of the personnel down here are security staff or workers moving tons of crates from one place to the other—the bustle of activity helps them blend in somewhat.

A large group of miners, dusty, decked out in garish uniforms and equipped with headlamps and metal tools at their belts, flood the area for a good half an hour on their way to the fifth level, giving Boba and Mando the perfect opportunity to slip closer to their destination.

“This is it,” Mando says. They are both huddled behind the wagon of a large transport vehicle, watching the entrance to a tiny, nondescript two-story building.

“It could be below us still,” Boba reminds him.

“I have a feeling this is the place. Look at the crates there—” He points to a stack of crates left by the corner of the warehouse, blocking the cramped space between its wall and the one of the neighbouring building. “The markings don’t look like anything we’ve seen on the way.”

“You may be onto something, but… this is very anticlimactic.”

Mando scans the area closely for a minute or two, then sighs in disappointment. “No heat signatures. I don’t think there’s anybody inside.”

“So, what’s your call, boss?”

Mando turns to him slowly. “This _is_ the place,” he insists, annoyed. “Let’s find a way inside.”

“I’m right behind you.”

Where there is no crew, there is an expensive security system set up instead. 

This rule of thumb has never failed Boba before, and it proves to be right once again as a more in depth search around the side of the warehouse reveals an extensive amount of wiring and two security systems tangled together right out of Boba’s worst nightmares.

"There should be a panel outside, out of our reach. It acts as a safety precaution in case the building locks down and gets stuck like that."

"Won’t they know we are disabling it?" Mando asks.

"They would, except we are not disabling it. Well, you aren’t, if you manage to do it right," Boba says, the beginning of a smirk replacing his frown.

Mando bristles. "What do you mean? Why am _I_ doing this when you’re the expert here?"

"I wouldn’t say quite the expert, but you know," Boba waves one hand dismissively. "You can fly, I can’t. And that—" he points to a little crevice on the second level of the warehouse "—is where the device should be, if I recognize this model correctly. Kinda too high up for my reach."

The device is indeed very high up. Mando cranes his neck and stands there silent for a few seconds as he struggles to find the point in question. He protests no more once he sees it half a meter away from the roof, only sighs again.

Boba’s starting to get the hang of each one of his tired sighs. Soon enough he’ll be able to catalogue all of Mando’s moods based on these tiny noises he makes when words are not enough anymore.

He spends several minutes digging through the wires. It’s been a few years since he last had to crack security alarms, but he is pleased to see his hands moving with a mind of their own, familiar with the motions, and the particularities of each device. Aurra Sing taught him the basics, and she taught them well.

It’s her voice he hears in his mind when he tells Mando what to do. “The most important part is that we synchronize, otherwise this will all be for nothing.”

“I…”

“Chin up, Mando,” Boba says. “You got the easier half.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Get up there and get ready.”

Boba hears him grumbling and barely stifles back his chuckle. Breaking and entering is always more fun with company.

It’s pitch black inside. The stench of antiquity permeates the air, in stark contrast to the steely fragrance wafting on the streets from the mines.

The light from Mando’s helmet cuts through the darkness like a knife. Crates, on top of crates, on top of crates—whole stacks of them line the walls of the main chamber like a maze, some of the same make they’ve seen the workers carrying around outside, others vastly different and bearing sigils and markings from planets all over the Outer and Mid Rim.

"This is not anyone’s headquarters," Mando says, taken aback by the sight.

Dread growing in the pit of his stomach, Boba wholeheartedly agrees with him.

It may not be her office, but it is undoubtedly tied to her business.

They split up, each tackling one side of the warehouse. Most of the crates are stacked up too high and seem too heavy to be moved around, but a bunch of them are within reach on solid ground, more easily accessible. 

Balancing his flashlight between his jaw and shoulder, Boba struggles to open the crate closest to him. The back of his neck prickles the longer it takes to cut through the bindings—he’s discovered in recent years that some situations awaken a certain brand of claustrophobia in him, and the atmosphere in this place reeks of trouble way over their heads.

Separated from Boba by a solid wall of these boxes, Mando is more successful in his exploration. “Jewelry,” he calls out. “An unreasonable amount of it.”

Boba’s crate finally cracks open, revealing an assortment of gemstones peppered in-between chunks of a filler, foamy material. "Is this a queen’s treasury room?" he jokes, moving onto another one.

"I found some weaponry.”

"Do you think Madame Xi’n _is_ the Collector?"

Boba finds some armour pieces, a set he doesn’t recognize but which, considering its neighbours, is probably worth more than Razor Crest itself.

"Not quite, but she _must_ be close to them," Mando says. "We can use her. There has to be something here to lead us to the Collector."

They spend a bit more time browsing through the items. With so many precious things all around, the individual pieces start losing their impact. A certified unblemished pre-Clone Wars B2 battle droid is packed up in a crate like a little doll, hugging its knees, covered by a protective piece of fabric like a blanket. Boba stares at it, mildly perturbed by the sight and the memories it brings, before he moves on.

“I see stairs,” Mando says. “There’s a room in the back.”

“I’m coming, give me a second, I’ve got another crate almost o—”

He cries out sharply and shuffles backwards, colliding solidly with the wall of boxes behind him.

"What is it?" Mando asks at once, alarmed.

Breathing is difficult for a few seconds while Boba gets his bearings, and he heaves a few times, heart thudding in his ears. 

Mando’s footsteps reach him within the blink of an eye, quickly helping him up from the ground. "What’s wrong?" he asks, shining his light around them.

"I, uhh…"

There is little Boba can say to describe the terror that struck him breathless as he looked inside the crate and saw a Mandalorian helmet decorated with blue. 

As if possessed, he walks back to it, feelings under tight control now, and he knows that it is not the same helmet, it cannot _be_ the same, since he destroyed it himself—

He swallows with difficulty and points his flashlight at the contents of the crate.

A Mandalorian helmet rests in the middle, its visor in full display. It is painted with blue, achingly familiar, except now that he is numb to it, Boba is calm enough to spot the differences: two ridges connect the top of the black visor with the back of the helmet, and the sides of it bear a touch of black.

Still, he is shaken. 

His father’s helmet exists only as a ghost, not as something palpable.

Mando follows closely behind him, keeping one hand over his back. With his other, he picks up the helmet and holds it out in front of him, and he stares at it in silence, as still as a statue. 

He doesn’t have to explain himself this time around, and it doesn’t take any words to convince Boba either—he feels the same rage building inside of him, using his own bones as firewood.

How many Mandalorians are scattered in pieces in the rest of this place?

"I was ready to let you do the honours when we met the Collector," Boba says through gritted teeth, "but I’m afraid we will have to do it together."

"Fine by me," says Mando, just as coldly.

***

The rest of their stay underground passes in a blur. 

The room at the back of the warehouse is an archive stuffed with transaction logs, various authenticity certificates, and other such documents to attest the high quality of the goods stored here. A good part of the files are encrypted, thoroughly protecting the identity of the sellers, but not all, much to the two men’s relief.

In a hole in the ground on the most unfriendly planet this side of the Outer Rim—perhaps not even Madame Xi’n expected to be found here.

One single forgotten log is all they need.

“Got it,” Boba says spitefully. “This is it.”

***

The slow trickle of the red mist is almost comforting to see as they return to the Razor Crest. 

Unlike that morning, there is no rush to their steps, so they linger and watch the sky from the top of a hill. Boba wants to run away from that warehouse, to put as much distance as possible between him and that heinous place full of stolen lives and history, but he is exhausted, so one step at a time is all he can manage.

Planet Staco is far from the first red planet he has been on, but no sight has ever touched him as this one does now. Remnant rays of sunlight filter through the tons of dust floating in the air, setting them alight like stars at twilight. A tangential ray catches the top of the trees just as the sun is midway to sunset and the whole place looks like it’s burning.

***

The tension hangs around both of them all throughout the remainder of their stay on Planet Staco. Unlike other times, instead of separating them, it brings them closer. Things have shifted in Boba’s eyes. While Slave-I was the only part of this that mattered to him, now it feels as though the line he has been toeing around the Mandalorian has finally been crossed, and their slightly overlapping plans have merged into one.

This tension bothers the child and makes it restless when they return to the ship. Both of them take their sweet time cleaning off the red dust piled on top of them, their movements slow and heavy, akin to the thoughts weighing on their shoulders. There’s been no fighting, no injury of any sort to speak of this time around, and yet Boba has rarely felt so drained after doing what amounts to sight-seeing a museum of antiques.

Mando goes on ahead to remove the extra filters underneath his helmet. Boba keeps his back to him, for Mando doesn’t move far, only walking up to his sleeping area, and this display of trust curbs some of Boba’s anger toward everyone involved in this collecting affair. He listens to the sounds Mando makes as he removes his helmet, and he brushes away the red dust lingering on the landing ramp, lost in memories.

Having nothing better to do except sleep or try to be minimally useful, options out of which the first is basically impossible at this point in time, Boba cuts more of the golden fruit from the Wheel into little pieces, channeling his frustrations into each slash of the knife.

He gives the child a plate full of them, far too many for it to eat without getting sick or worse, but it’s fine. Boba will keep watch and make sure the child doesn’t overdo it. Any attempt at sleep will bring with it that which he dreads the most—nightmares, so he mentally prepares himself to stay awake.

Mando sits in the pilot’s seat motionlessly, appearing for all intents and purposes as if he were dead to the world. Only the tiniest tapping of his index finger on the top of his knee lets Boba know the man is still awake and deep in thought.

"You should eat something," Boba says.

"I’m not hungry," Mando replies evenly, as if they hadn’t both eaten their last meal a full day before. After a few moments of silence _—"You_ should eat something."

Chuckling emptily, Boba looks at the plate of fruit he left for the kid. "I’m not hungry either."

Mando lets out a hum, a gentle ‘Well, why are you asking _me?’_

"I didn’t think it would take this long," Boba confesses quietly, remorsefully almost. He thought he knew what he was signing up for back when he decided to leave Tatooine, but now he finds himself unprepared to face his past, to find out what truly matters to him.

"I’m seeing this to the end, no matter how long it takes," says Mando.

This could be a good time to come clean with his identity. To explain himself, explain his story better. Talk about his father in the way that Jango Fett deserves, not the way the Galaxy remembers him. Focus on the best of him, instead of all the ways people have wronged him, spread lies about him, or, as Boba did thoughtlessly, recklessly, fueled only by vengeance and hate, destroyed the most precious part Jango Fett left behind, in an attempt at assassinating his father’s killer.

He’s searching for Slave I to rectify this, but he knows, truly, if only he dared admit it, that the last thing left in this world from his father is him—and he isn’t any good at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone expecting something to happen: SYKE! q(≧▽≦q) I mean, my apologies!! (/▽＼)
> 
> Starting w next week we're entering the important middle arc of this story though so I hope that will compensate. If I manage to clean chapter 9, I'll probably stick to this Thursday night posting. I feel like with each week I'm posting earlier and earlier... but I don't think early updates are something people would mind. I know I wouldn't.


	9. A Helping Hand

Planet Staco has turned the stranger from an ally by circumstance into someone sharing Din's burden. For hours now Din has been thinking about it—the way this is so deeply personal to the stranger, but also tied to the Mandalorians. He wants to ask him, ‘Why did you cry out when you saw the helmet?’ He wants to ask him, ‘Were you one of us, forced to shed your beliefs?’ He wants to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ and beg for an answer.

Once the idea that someone may have forcefully separated this man from their culture settles in, it starts plaguing Din like a shadow, always breathing down the back of his neck. He wants to ask, he wants to know, and after all they’ve been through, after the many ways Din has shown him that he trusts him, Din wants to be trusted back with an honest answer.

On his side, the door is open, yet despite the stranger’s ease around him and the child, despite his eagerness to help them out, to  _ care _ for their wellbeing, there is only a keyhole Din can peer through, and nothing else.

Though they are almost on Madame Xi’n’s doorstep, there are a thousand ways things could go wrong. The thought that this is not even the final step settles like the insidious red dust from Staco over Din’s shoulders, bringing forth a weariness that is close to seeping into his very bones and making a home for itself in his innards. With all the stranger’s reticence to reveal himself, still Din thinks it is easy to bear this alongside him, and if they have to stand in the dark, then so be it.

Currently, as the Razor Crest is steadily approaching their destination, the stranger is indulging himself in his Tatooinian drink. As much as he joked about it when they first set out together, this bottle has barely seen the light of day throughout their travels. It stood in the food crate for weeks, months—and it has felt so much longer with this man for company—and even now, when he puts it away, Din would bet there is still more than half of its contents inside. It will certainly see the end of their journey.

It has a sharp, intense fragrance, which fills the cockpit when it is poured into a glass. Part of the flavour reaches Din through his helmet, teasing him with the hint of something sweet and aromatic, oddly enchanting if not for the worrying colour. A bit like a warning sign—bright, shimmery, but ultimately poisonous.

"Do you want to try it?" the stranger asks.

"I’m not particularly fond of alcohol."

"More for me." He shrugs and takes a sip; the first touch of alcohol makes his face screw up in a frown, then he relaxes, the only angry lines on his face left—the scars. They are the first thing anybody sees when meeting this man. Deep, ragged lines, serving the same purpose as that drink: to warn, or, for the naive, to draw them in.

Din chooses to be naive this time. "Where did you get those scars?" he asks.

Another frown mars the stranger’s face as he brings a hand to the side of his face, where a larger discoloured tissue reaches the side of his cheek from above his ear. "Do you know anything about Tatooine’s wildlife?"

"Some, I guess. I killed a krayt dragon." It makes Din oddly shy to say this, though it is a fact.

"Ah." The stranger chuckles to himself. He brings the glass to the tip of his lips, but doesn’t drink right away, instead looking over the rim at Din. "Almost forgot the first meal you served me was krayt dragon steak. It feels like a lifetime ago."

Thinking of the three of them standing out there in the Dune Sea, while the binary suns of Tatooine descended into the night, brings forth such melancholy in Din that his throat is tight all of a sudden, dry with an indecipherable hue of sadness. So many nights Din has spent around the campfire on that planet, with so many locals in his company, yet that particular memory is the only one that stayed with him so strongly.

"We’ve seen many sunsets since," Din agrees quietly. A couple of sunrises too. Din would like to see more of those.

The man offers a little toast with his glass, before taking a large swig. "I shan’t bore you with the details," he goes on. "They’re not pretty at all and definitely not suited for our present company." As he says this, the stranger looks at the child, who is sitting next to him, leaning on his leg and staring at the acid yellow drink in the bottle mesmerized. "Suffice to say I’m hard to chew."

He boops the kid over the nose.

The child cries out in surprise and falls over on the floor.

Din startles too, almost gets out of the pilot’s seat to check on the little one, but the stranger laughs and stops him with a gesture of his hand.

"Did you zone out, kid?" he asks amidst his chuckles.

The kid stands, a bit wobbly, and beelines toward Din, head turned down at the floor and tiny shoulders drawn in.

"Don’t embarrass the child," Din scolds him half-heartedly as he bends down to pick the kid up. As soon as the child is secure and at a new altitude, it turns its head toward the man and glares—as much as such a little creature can glare, in any case.

"I’m sorry," the stranger says seriously.

"That did not sound genuine at all," Din says, if only to mess with him a little bit.

After emptying out the glass and setting it down with a loud  _ chink, _ the stranger hoists himself off the floor, walks over to the other wall, picks up something from a tiny crevice among the metal panels, and walks back toward them. He gets down on one knee and presents the small item like a jewel in front of the child: it is a tiny piece of candy, a remnant of their first mission.

"Please accept my most sincere apologies," he says solemnly—and a tad dramatic.

The kid watches the candy blankly for a few seconds, then grabs it with its tiny hand.

"Apology accepted, I hope."

"That’s bribery," Din comments.

Pleased with himself, the man stands and sits in the chair to Din’s left. As soon as he is seated, little noises bubble up from the child as it strains to reach him.

"I’m making positive associations and it seems they are working."

"You  _ bribed—" _ Din sighs and shakes his head as he hands the kid over.

The stranger accepts the child gladly. (Smugly, almost.) "At this age, children need a little external motivation, you know?"

"I know now, I suppose…" 

***

Their coordinates point toward a building already visible from a long way up into the air. It appears to be a massive estate dominating over the wealthier district in the city, with a roof made of reflective tiles, shining in the light of the three moons like a beacon. Ostentatious and looking over everybody else: this is precisely how Din expected to find Xi’n Niang, and it appears that this will indeed be the case.

"Honestly, do people not have anything to do with their money?" the stranger mutters. He’s violating several safety regulations for landing procedures as he stands with his neck craned to look out the screen at the city below. "Surely after everything you own is the latest model, that should be enough?"

"You’re always asking for more credits," Din retorts. "Please put your seatbelt on."

"Of course I am! These rich bastards can afford it and then some!" The stranger hobbles back into his chair and finally straps himself down. "I’m just saying, it feels like a waste. It  _ looks _ like a waste."

Din thinks of the Foundlings the covert on Nevarro was sheltering and his heart aches in his chest. As capable and ferocious as the Armourer was, he should have stayed behind and helped her. The uncertainty of her fate, added on top of the fate of everyone else, stays with him like an invisible weight dragging behind him at every step.

Will he ever meet his family again?

The galaxy is vast, to the point of endless. Sure, it can be crossed within a week with the fastest ship, but to search among the stars in-between for a handful of armoured souls? That is a criminally impossible task.

He can only cling to the hope that someone, somewhere is still alive, and that the Foundlings were taken to safety.

There is little else left except hope for Din Djarin.

"We keep a portion of our rewards to give to the young," Din says. He’s never spoken about their customs to an outsider before, never thought to spread the knowledge, but he senses a link between him and the stranger now. It doesn't quite feel like he is betraying his covert at all. "The bigger the bounty, the better the children eat."

"You’ve picked a violent profession to help some children," the stranger says.

"I was raised in the Fighting Corps. Violence is what I know best."

"You don’t strike me as a violent man, Mando."

The words leave a strange impression on Din, making him stand straighter in the pilot’s seat. "I try to avoid confrontation when I can, but it doesn’t always turn out as planned."

"I wish I had met you earlier in my life," the man whispers so sadly and so quietly that it seems he didn’t mean to speak at all. 

The words carry across just fine to Din though, and leave him wrong-footed, feeling unbalanced even though he is sitting down. "What?" he asks by force of habit, surprised, warmth blossoming in his chest.

"Just talking to myself. Shouldn’t we be landing soon?"

They should indeed. Din focuses on the landing procedure, but not without sneaking a few glances at the man by his side. He’s a bit like a stubborn plant that needs a lot of patience and sunlight before he deems it time to break past the earthly embrace.

Like the first planet they went to, this one is similarly bustling with humans and aliens of all races, if not even more varied. The closer they get to the hangar, the bigger the city appears around them, and the wealthy buildings they saw from the air rise up far above in the distance, on a hill.

Once business is settled with the employees in the hangar and the child is left with its toys and candy in the cockpit, the two men set out on their way to explore the area.

The streets are dirty with dust, leaves and feathers, with the occasional corner of an alley sporting several trashbags left to rot in the sun. Most of the pedestrians keep their heads down as they pass them by on the street, either from fear or from the simple misery paralyzing one’s head to always look down.

"This is depressing," the stranger comments.

As they advance, tidier districts replace the city slums, though the gloomy air about the citizens persists. Only the general upkeep of the houses indicates the presence of a middle class, and even that is debatable in the face of such desolation. Heavy clouds gather in the sky, casting more shadows over them, turning the tiny, cluttered streets into hazardous obstacle courses, with uneven pavement and years-old potholes.

Closer to the hill, however, the city becomes livelier.

Soon, multicoloured lights and muffled club music replace the general chatter on the streets. Neon bar signs, arrows, and posters decorated with tiny led lights flash in patterned sequences to attract potential customers. Countless offers for fun, and games, and unforgettable nights line the windows, the walls—everywhere around them, something is being advertised. 

The poor residential buildings give way to the nightlife of the city, both in the shape of the background and that of the population.

Excitement and laughter permeate the area. Groups and groups of youths of various origins cross the streets on both sides, going from bar to bar, unafraid of letting the whole world know what their plans are or how much fun they are having.

It feels like an entirely different city, lively and carefree.

Above all this entertainment, pristine homes and offices rise up on the rocky side of the hill all the way to the top. A winding path goes along the side of the hill, and on its steepest side there are modern elevators installed for pedestrians. They easily decide to continue on foot in order to escape detection for as long as possible.

Halfway up the slope, several streets away from their destination, Din stops next to a wealthy building and offers his arm to the stranger.

The stranger looks at him in confusion.

"We could use some higher ground," Din says, nodding toward the rooftop.

Reluctantly, the man steps closer to Din.

Trying not to think too much of it, Din puts his arm around his back and holds on tight. It takes a couple of seconds at most to get on the roof and put some respectable distance between them, but Din knows, just  _ knows _ that the solid weight he felt at his side will haunt him many seconds longer.

The stranger wobbles once he is back on his own two feet. "I haven’t been carried like that in a while," he mumbles.

"Are you motion sick?"

"No! Nothing of the sort," the man reassures him awkwardly. "Don’t worry about it."

The roof they’re on is flat, fragmented by a couple of metal ridges which appear mechanized, no doubt installed to prevent unknown vehicles from landing.

Their target is directly ahead, a tad higher than them but within decent distance for Din’s audio amplifier to work. He makes himself comfortable in one corner, out of direct sight, and turns on the heat-seeking programme in his visor. A multitude of silhouettes pop up on the feed, both outside and inside the building. A good number seem to be patrolling the area, posture straight, while a handful are conversing in one room above ground level.

Next to him, the stranger is surveying the area with a pair of binoculars. "I don’t like our odds," he whispers after a minute of silent reconnaissance. "Too many guards. The area’s unfit for assault either—I don’t want to imagine the chaos if every wealthy bastard around here reacted to blaster fire. We couldn’t possibly make it out alive."

Din hums in agreement. He scopes in with his Amban rifle and focuses on the people milling about the top floor of the residence. The very next moment, high-pitched noise pierces his ears and he gasps in pain. 

With the static feedback ringing in his head, Din turns around completely and cuts off all attempts at surveillance. 

"Looks like she’s the paranoid sort," comments the stranger. "Let’s take a closer look the old-fashioned way."

They descend, and, blending in with the shadows, slowly pass from building to building until they are within hearing range of the guards stationed at the entrance to the estate. A tall iron gate is set up between the street and the property. In the dim light let through by the thick overhead blanket of clouds, there seems to be a small garden of sorts arranged in front of the building, visible through the decorative shrubs lining the fence.

"Should we gather for spotchka and cigars tonight?" one guard asks the other.

"I can’t," says the other guard. "I need to write to her again, she has to see reason."

"I don’t know if I blame her—things are bad. I wonder if this city could get any worse…"

The second guard clicks their mouth annoyed. "Maybe. Ah, fuck it. Let’s drink tonight."

While the two are discussing the details of their meeting, Din and the stranger manage to find a better vantage point and lie low for several hours, watching the doors of the building attentively. The sun sets as they wait for news, throwing deep red rays across the sky and softening the underside of the clouds with shades of pink.

Nothing noteworthy happens. The guards come and go, discussing local politics or fashion or the best bars in the area. This quiet goes on for a while, right until darkness starts falling properly, when Din hears faint static in his ears. 

He pays it no mind, except half a minute later, someone speaks directly in his ears:

"I see you, sneaking around like that."

A cold chill passes down Din’s spine. The voice came from his helmet, through the channel he only ever used with his covert before. With his father, last.

"I want a meeting," they say—it is a light voice, perhaps that of a female alien, with an undertone like an echo to her words.

Din remains silent. He catches the strangers eyes with a gesture of his hand, and quickly, he signs  _ ‘Help.’ _

Is she watching them right now?

_ ‘Where?’ _ the stranger signs back, eyes widening.

Din points to the buttons of his vambrace, then to his helmet.

"Come on, I know I got the right frequency. You can hear me just fine," the voice drawls, taunting him. "You’re here for  _ her, _ aren’t you?"

"Yes," he replies hoarsely.

"Excellent! Meet me  _ here—" _ a ping, followed by an address popping up on his visor feed "—and make sure you’re not followed. ASAP."

The connection closes with a tiny burst of static.

_ ‘Distraction,’ _ Din points toward the guards patrolling near them. He won’t be able to leave quickly enough undetected.

The stranger shakes his head in disbelief. They’ve no more eloquent way to communicate without giving their positions away. Thankfully, they’ve spent enough time together that there is no more persuading required on Din’s part. (Another thought he cannot dwell on right now, but which he expects to resurface later. There’s too many little things piling up.)

_ ‘Go,’ _ signs the stranger.

Right before Din rounds the corner of a building and disappears from the scene, he hears a bang go off behind him, and the telltale noise of guards gathering to inspect the disturbance.

The address Din received leads to a back alley squashed between two rundown buildings and a large, extremely loud arcade center. He reaches it easily with the help of his jetpack carrying him over the rooftops, instead of having to brave the winding streets of spice and gambling underneath.

The area is cast in deep shadows. Any chance at eavesdropping is nullified by the club music blasting from the entertainment business, the bass so heavy that Din feels his heart thrumming in his chest. The entertainment center’s logo, bright and full of dancing leds, reaches part of the alley through several reflections in the other building’s windows, casting it in dim, muffled bursts of multicoloured light. In that penumbra, Din spies a single person waiting in one corner of the alley.

Whoever it is and whatever they want, they have a lot to explain, starting with hacking Din’s private channel.

He still has the element of surprise—mostly—so he looks over his blaster first, before he drops down a few meters away from the individual. The confidence of the voice he heard keeps him fully on guard, prepared to retaliate should any surprise attack come from either surrounding building.

The person lets out a yell of utter terror and backs up so violently that they hit the brick wall behind with a smack loud enough Din hears it over the music.

"Uh..." Din checks his location, puzzled, but this  _ is _ the address he received. "Uh, you contacted me?"

Din takes a step forward.

The alien is a duros female, with blue skin and red eyes sparkling low in the light. She stands still, offering no opposition except to glare, in turn, at Din, at her feet, and at the wall behind Din, moment when her expression wavers and becomes sad rather than angry.

"What do you want?" Din asks her firmly. The longer he stares at her hairless head, the more he feels uneasy and wrong-footed. Could this be a child?

"What?" the duros asks. "Just get on with it. I deserve it."

Din stares at her, flabbergasted. "What?"

"What," she repeats, confused herself now, "aren’t you here to kill me?"

"Kill you? No! I need information," Din explains. He holds both hands up in a display of peace. "Information on Xi’n Niang."

"Information on… Who are you?" She tenses up and tries to back up again, but there is nowhere else for her to go. Proper light falls on her young face—no wrinkles, save for the natural shapes of the protruding duros mouth, and the lines running parallel from the inner corner of her eyes down to the sides of her chin.

_ It’s a child, _ Din realizes, horrified.

"I’m Mandalorian," he says, off-kilter.

This makes the duros scowl fiercely. "Of all the…"

"Why did you contact me?"

"I should’ve looked first," she grumbles, completely ignoring him.

Din takes a step forward. The lights of the arcade logo dance wildly on his shiny beskar.

The duros lets out a small cry of surprise. Din turns and finds the stranger standing in the middle of the alley, breathing heavily.

"You couldn’t have picked to do this somewhere closer? I had to borrow a speeder," he grumbles. The two of them make eye contact, and whatever he senses from Din’s lack of reaction and slow movements, it makes the stranger become more alert himself. "What’s wrong? A bad set-up?"

He advances into the little empty space between the buildings and brandishes his gun.

The duros seizes him up; with her back to the wall and her only escape route blocked by Din and the stranger, there isn’t much she can do except glare at them fiercely.

"What’s this prickly child doing here? Where’s the contact?" the stranger asks, turning around to check the shadows for another person. "Mando?"

"This is the contact," Din says tiredly.

The stranger frowns and looks back at her. They stare at each other in silence, both of their faces in mirrored apprehension as the reality of the situation makes itself known. From the growing frown on the stranger's face to the venomous glare on the duros', Din finds himself on the verge of yet another mess and he is tired.

In these few moments of silence while they each size each other up, Din takes a moment for himself to study the alien girl. Her youth is obvious now that he knows it for sure—the skin on her head is taut and her stature barely brings her to Din’s chest. A large, dark robe covers most of her in its endless folds, but all it manages to do is make her seem smaller, lost amidst the fabric.

She sees him staring at her and flinches violently.

"That suit of armour is certainly scary looking, but you've got nothing to fear, kid," says the stranger, stepping in-between her and Din. "He's really soft inside."

The duros looks down at her feet, her shoulders dropping, void of energy.

The stranger throws Din a cautious look, almost like he's asking him to stay put, and approaches the alien with small, careful steps.

"What do you want?" she asks, words muffled by the high collar of her robe. "Why are you after Xi’n Niang?"

"She's stolen many precious things," the stranger says. "Things she doesn't deserve to touch, let alone possess."

"And what are you going to do about it?"

"Right a few wrongs, for starters."

The duros glares at him, but says nothing in reply.

"What does she have over your head?" Din asks.

The duros looks at him with such hurt and malice in her eyes that he wants to step back and turn around, if only to not see such an expression directed at him.

Just as surprised by the vitriol in her eyes, the stranger blocks their line of sight again, this time for Din's benefit. He puts a hand on her shoulder and, in a clear, patient voice, he says, "Talk. I’m listening."

"I’ll tell you what you need to know," she says, "but you must do something for me first."

Din and the stranger exchanged a silent look. Of course there is a catch. There is always a catch, and Din is so,  _ so _ tired of it all.

"We don’t have time for games, kid," he grumbles, stepping in line with the stranger. "You reached out, so better tell us what we need to know if you want that woman out of the picture."

The duros flinches at the words and more so when Din takes one step forward and towers over her.

"You must help me, otherwise I can’t help you," she repeats firmly, much more authoritative than the way she trembles in her shoes, looking everywhere but directly at Din.

The stranger pulls Din back gently and, still closely observing the duros, he asks, "What’s the matter?"

"A group of mercenaries wants me dead. I've got all the intel you need." Her face transforms as she speaks, hardening in a way no child should look like. "Kill them and Xi’n Niang is yours."

Din studies his friend. The man seems tired as well, but not entirely opposed to the offer. 

It’s just a child standing here in front of them.

"I come with you," she says with an air of finality. "Take it or leave it."

***

The three of them return to the ship in what can only be described as the most awkward walk of the century.

Even within the safety of his beskar, Din feels wrong and alienated by the reaction he received from the duros, so full of hate and distrust, sentiment which doesn’t leave her even after they come to terms, and rests in her eyes every time Din happens to glance at her.

The stranger walks in between them, but he does not provide enough cover for Din to stop feeling like the side of his face is burning from the constant negative attention.

No words are exchanged the entire way. At first, the loud music of the entertainment district covers any semblance of conversation one could have on the street, but as they retrace their steps, the reckless joy gives way to weird hissing and the disturbing presence of street strays resurfacing from the shadows after night-fall.

At the Razor Crest, the girl elects to ignore Din entirely.

The stranger stops her right outside the ship and asks her, "Do you have a name?"

"Ada," she says.

"Welcome aboard, Ada. There is a small green creature inside. If you lay one hand on its head, you may find yourself short of a limb."

She takes a step backward at the sudden threat.

Din, too, turns to the stranger, both eyebrows rising on his face in surprise.

"Just making sure," the man says.

"I have no interest in your pets," she replies gruffly.

Upon entering the ship, a quiet ‘oh’ escapes her.

The child peeks out at them from the side of a crate, only its head visible, tilted at an angle, with its long ears on display out in the open.

"Pet, hm?" The stranger folds his arms. "No touching."

She stops, hand frozen in the air where it’s hanging between her and the child. "Of course."

They gather in the cockpit to talk and discuss their plan of attack. They’re only three people (and a half,) but Din is reminded of the annoying crowd he flew to spring that twi’lek prisoner, and the memory puts him in a sour mood as he heads to his designated chair. Again, he is subjected to pointless prejudice, and again, he has to bear it to continue his mission. Although endurance has always been his strength, he would like to let loose someday. 

Bite back.

Which is why, when he asks, "What’s your deal? Aren’t you part of Madame Xi’n’s team?" and the girl ignores his question completely, going as far as to turn her head away from him to look ahead instead, out the Razor Crest’s screen, he elbows the stranger in the side, not even trying to be subtle about it. 

In this company, there seems to be no point in him saying or doing anything at all.

The stranger takes the lead from him easily enough, though not without shaking his head at Din in reproach. "Why did you contact us?"

At first Din expects this question to be ignored as well, as the duros stands still several seconds longer.

"Good timing on your part," she says, voice rather neutral, if somewhat bitter. When she deigns to look at the stranger, she moves with an unspeakable weight over her shoulders and in her eyes, far beyond what a child her age should hold. "I have been following your journey for a while."

The stranger straightens his posture in alarm.

"Oh, not  _ you _ directly," Ada explains with a laugh. "A few disturbances in our schedules, you see, and a tiny disconnect of my personalized alarm system on Staco. It was easy to connect the dots. I’ve been expecting an arrival for a few days now."

He blinks at her in surprise. "I—"

"I’m sure you know your stuff, but so do I," she cuts in smoothly, revealing a string of pearly teeth in her smile, "and you know how it is. Hire a thief if you want to catch other thieves successfully."

The stranger inclines his head in agreement, but not without throwing Din a wide-eyed, warning look.

Din himself shares this undercurrent of panic and unease that they have not been as subtle as they tried. He studies the girl with newfound respect, more than simply at her skill at such a young age. Just about everybody Din knows has been taught to be self-reliant from childhood, so that is not so strange to see in Ada, but the hint at her potential has him reassess the threat she may pose to them long-term.

A child, but standing behind that child, a murderer.

Jaw set, she looks at the stranger with the intensity of a weathered bounty hunter looking for an alliance. "I  _ want _ to help. We want the same thing."

"Do we?"

"She pays for what she’s done. I can get you what you’re looking for. Win-win."

"Hm..." The stranger folds his arms across his chest. "There’s no guarantee we will succeed. What if you’re walking us into an elaborate trap?"

Ada scoffs in annoyance. "Like I’d waste so much time to fly to the other side of this rock if I wanted that."

"Do not underestimate me, kid," the stranger growls.

She puts her hands up in a sign of peace at once. "Not at all, I assure you. If you do kill me, I only ask that you cover my face."

"Alright, this is unnecessarily morbid," the stranger replies, strained. "We need a plan."

"What have the mercs done to you?" Din asks, intrigued.

A visible jolt in her shoulders betrays her mask of indifference toward him, yet she elects to ignore him still.

Annoyed, he turns around in his chair and, as he starts up the ship’s engines, he mutters a low, "Fine. Don’t answer me."

Is it only prejudice that is making her act this way toward him? Is it something else? It rubs Din the wrong way to be treated like he does not exist in his own ship. It wouldn’t be the first time, but he’ll deal with it just as he dealt with it every time, and get what he came here for, then put it all behind him.

Some people look at him differently at the end, when they see what he is like. The power of the example, and all that.

Perhaps it will make a difference here as well. She is just a child.

_ One more try, _ Din thinks wearily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did anyone catch the Dishonored reference I sneaked in this chapter?
> 
> SOO the arc I've been waiting for is finally happening! I hope y'all enjoy the things I have prepared for you. 💕🥰✨
> 
> In the meantime I have discovered [this song](https://youtu.be/rUQFWEyyL4w) from Red Dead Redemption 2's OST kinda works as a theme song for the story. I certainly can imagine this brand of melancholy reflected in some scenes, both past and future.
> 
> Thank you so much for your continued support!! Come shout at me (or just say hi) on [tumblr](https://maderilien.tumblr.com/)!


	10. We, Fragile Creatures

Ada continues to be on edge the entire evening. She's put the hood of her cloak back over her head and has retreated into a dark corner of the cockpit, well hidden by the shadows. A single light is on near to the control board, where Boba sits on one of the passenger seats, paying attention to her, even though his back is turned.

The girl makes no noise. Mando is louder than her where he’s eating downstairs, the sound of rummaging and dishes clanging against each other, as muffled as it is by the metal panels, still reaching them better than any sign of life on Ada’s part.

Boba is eating himself, some simple leftover biscuits from the Wheel. In between two bites of the salty, crumbly snack, he looks over his shoulder toward Ada and says, "So you’re good with electronics?"

She grunts an affirmative. The way she’s plastered to the wall, she looks more like a shadow than a person.

She says nothing else.

"Where are you from?"

No answer.

"What’s this lady like? Xi’n… what’s her name…" Boba lets the words trail off, but Ada refuses to be baited into a conversation, so he sighs, having no choice but to let the matter drop.

When Mando returns to the cockpit, his arrival is marked by a sharp, not-so-subtle inhale on the girl’s part.

"I’ll set the course," he says, crossing the distance to his chair without sparing a glance at the duros.

Honestly, Boba would prefer to walk to their destination if it meant having some air to breathe. The oxygen in the cockpit has all but been replaced by tension and unpleasant energy. 

"Run us through the details again," he requests, beckoning the girl to come closer. At least if one of them talks, he can focus on the words, and not the blue mood in between.

The sooner they get this done, the sooner they can all go their separate ways.

Ada hesitates a few seconds, but sees reason before Boba, too, loses his patience. She stands, drawing the edges of her cloak around herself tightly, leaving only the bottom half of her face visible.

"The team I’m interested in has their headquarters in the Valley. I’ve shown you the blueprints." Her voice loses its initial tremor and hardens as she speaks, coming close to violent when she mentions the target. "I’ve been secretly monitoring their activity. There’s no way the head of these bastards isn’t there—unless I’m incredibly unlucky, but I doubt it. I’ll be directing you through their base. Do not leave a single soul alive."

Boba breathes out noisily, not quite a laugh, but certainly bearing a degree of mirth to it. "You’re out for blood, aren’t you? How old are you?"

"Fifteen," she answers fiercely, jutting her chin out. "What about it?"

"I was even worse at your age…" he mumbles. Whatever made this child so rough around the edges, Boba doesn’t dare ask for details, knowing there is no chance she would trust him to that extent. All he can offer is the reassurance of vengeance—for clearly this is a child’s vengeance—though not without a warning. "Their deaths may not bring you the respite you’re looking for."

She glares at him. Were they standing any closer, Boba fears he might have had to step away in order to avoid getting kicked in the shin.

"We have a deal, then?" Mando intervenes, looking from one to the other. "We take these criminals out, you get us into Xi’n Niang’s quarters?"

Ada looks very intently at Boba when she answers, "Yes."

The girl vanishes in the cargo hold after that, under the pretense she wants to be alone. In her absence, Mando finally relaxes and slumps down in the pilot’s seat, the tension that’s been keeping the muscles in his shoulders and back tight all day finally visibly melting away.

Boba watches him closely from the side, wondering whether to breach or not to breach the hot topic of the day.

"Do you think a Mandalorian harmed her in some way?" Mando asks, getting ahead of him.

"She definitely doesn’t like you."

Mando sighs.

"Let me do the talking," Boba says gently, placing a hand over Mando’s forearm and squeezing it. "I think I know where she’s coming from."

"Alright."

There’s something more bothering him. Truthfully, the girl’s behaviour bothers Boba too, in the way she so adamantly refuses to talk to Mando. Nobody in their right mind can not talk to him, especially after spending at least a couple of hours in his company and having had the opportunity to see how collected and respectful Mando is.

Boba cannot wrap his mind around it. It cannot be something as simple as prejudice. It feels more personal than that.

Mandalorians aren’t all flawless stellar individuals who recite their values and Creed every night before falling asleep. They come in all shapes and sizes, and in all levels of morality and of greed, and Boba knows full well they are as flawed as any other being in this galaxy.

Perhaps a Mandalorian like those _Boba_ knows, not like Mando, has traumatized this poor child in some way.

That may not be so hard to believe.

Mando’s proximity to Boba almost fooled him into believing they are all like him, but the truth is—someone like Mando is a rare find.

***

The Valley, which appears to be in fact a large city, is all the way across an ocean, several hours of flight away. It’s still night when the Razor Crest lands in the middle of a plain, the moons offering more than enough light to let them orient themselves without too much trouble. Little to no star twinkles in the sky, the fragile starlight easily overshadowed by the planet’s natural satellites.

With Mando already out of the ship, Ada cooperates more easily. They’re in the cargo hold, a step away from the entrance, when she finally gives Boba the precise location of the base and syncs up a map with the nautolan’s device. The holopad’s apparition makes her frown, and she regards it suspiciously for a moment before turning to squint at Boba with some doubt on her face.

"Did you clean this properly when you took it?" she asks, waving the holopad around derogatorily.

Boba folds his arms. "Of course I did. Location and contact data was first to go."

"Hmm…" She opens up several windows on the screen, angling it toward him when he leans to catch a glimpse, and shows him a few data files left in the system. "Pretty good job, though these here should be altered too if you want to stay fully untraceable."

"I see. Do I delete them or…?"

"Yeah, that works."

He grabs the holopad, but she doesn’t let it go. 

Staring at the ground resolutely, holding firmly onto the device as if her life depended on it, she asks, "Can you check their treasury for something?"

"I don’t think we’ll have much time to dawdle and sightsee," he replies, though intrigued by the genuine plea in her voice. "What did they take?"

She looks at him unblinking, unseeing almost, as she prepares herself to speak. The rigidity of her posture and the slow desperation taking hold of her eyes urges Boba to take a step back and wait for her to continue.

"I’ll tell you when you get there. _He_ musn’t see," Ada whispers, nodding toward Mando, who is surveying the area from the bottom of the ramp.

"Kid—"

"Please. You must go alone."

"I’ll do what I can," Boba says. "You stay here and keep an eye on the little one."

"Thank you."

***

Once they get to the base, it’s all a matter of following the blueprints and Ada’s instructions.

"Follow the wall closely, you should be coming up on the back entrance anytime now," Ada says through the voice-link, so cool and level-headed that she sounds far more experienced than her age would suggest. A far cry from her earlier behaviour. 

Trustworthy, almost, which is enough for Boba to go on in this particular case.

Mando finds the door soon enough. He scans the area himself, and, through a series of simple hand gestures, reveals the presence of three guards on the other side of the wall. They exchange a look, a nod of the head, then burst inside, guns at the ready.

The mercenaries on watch react quickly. Out of the three, two are easily put down, one by each of them, but the third squirrels away through another door and sounds the alarm.

"Dank farrik," Mando mutters under his breath.

"Lighten up," Boba drawls, passing him by, "I missed some good proper action."

"They’re onto you," says Ada. the sound of her tapping on the keyboard carries through the device. "The barracks are waking up. Four mercs heading your way, right hand side."

"You’re a proper little hacker, aren’t you," Boba chuckles. The telltale signs of an adrenaline rush grips his body, and his hand itches on his gun, eager to see more fighting. 

Ahead, the first merc appears around a corner, only to fall limp to the floor, blaster shot to the neck. "And _you_ should focus on the mission a little more, partner," Mando tells him gravely.

Boba shrugs, but does move on from the ribbing and focuses more on the actual action happening around them. It’s exciting to see how much better they fit together now, after gathering proper experience on their previous missions. He’s starting to predict Mando’s moves before the man actually makes them, which helps Boba fight pro-actively and cover Mando’s blind spots before they can even manifest.

Still relying far too heavily on his beskar armour, Mando ploughs through them like a mythosaur, careless of the bullets hitting him. It’s not entirely mindlessly charging on ahead, mind, but it worries Boba. Thankfully, he’s seen and fought alongside enough bounty hunters in this galaxy to figure out how to best compliment Mando’s course of action.

With his aim, trained for decades, ever better with each passing year, he ends up using Mando as a shield, keeping one eye on his targets and the other on any enemies vying for Mando’s flanks. Admittedly, Boba thought he’d not only have his armour back by this point, but also his ship, and that he would be well on his way to nurse his withered roots somewhere on an isolated planet, yet here he is, still fighting by this Mandalorian’s side—starting to enjoy it, even.

Ada’s stream of information gives them an incredible advantage. Within ten minutes, they’ve bypassed the outer layers of the base and taken out a decent number of mercenaries. There shouldn't be many left.

"I count thirteen heat signatures amassing in the hall to your right. A similar amount up ahead." Switching to her private channel with Boba, she says, "Remember what I asked you. The vault’s ahead, last door on the left."

Boba breathes in deeply. There has to be something to distract him well enough.

He throws Mando a challenging look, tiny (and hopefully not so fake) smirk on his lips as he says, "How about we split up, see who finishes their side faster?"

Mando lets out something like a laugh, muffled by his helmet. "You’d bet against a Mandalorian?"

"Overconfident, Mando? If I beat you, you have to give me a kiss."

Mando’s laugh is clear as bells now. "Ha! Dream on. See you in the office."

"Good luck!" Boba calls after him for effect. His heart’s beating really hard in his chest all of a sudden. "You’re going to need it!"

They split up, Mando going right, and Boba going on ahead. As promised by the duros, a stream of mercenaries show up at the other end of the corridor from Boba, except far fewer than expected.

"The vault’s right there," she says, strained.

A few well placed shots clear the area within a minute. Keeping his back to the door, he eyes both ends of the corridor, on guard. His shoulders hurt something fierce where he hit them earlier, while dodging one merc’s particularly aggressive attacks. 

"What about the other enemies?"

"I lied," Ada says flatly. "They’re all with the Mandalorian."

 _"Hey,"_ Boba snarls, hot anger flooding his chest and throat at once, "I’m not helping you at the expense of his life!"

"He’s handling them!" she snarls right back, then her breath cuts off sharply, and her tone turns into a broken plea. "I need that item, please. He’s not hurt, I’m looking at him right now. I swear!"

Grumbling, Boba forces the vault door open with a tiny thermal detonator. Inside, the safety light flickers on and off in a reddish hue, falling over several crates and a long shelf stacked with weapons. The vault is very small, barely spacious enough to allow a few steps left and right. Boba approaches the shelf across from the doorway and looks over the guns stored on it as he waits.

"So what am I looking for?"

Quietly, worse than a secret—rather like a betrayal of oneself—she says, "A helmet." A breath. "Beskar. Mandalorian."

Everywhere he turns, there’s karking Mandalorian things to deal with. 

Exhaling heavily, Boba starts rummaging through the crates. Time is of the essence, and though he is not going to stick to the little challenge he made with Mando, he doesn’t want to be questioned about his whereabouts either.

Credits, ammunition, more credits—the more crates he opens, the wobblier the girl’s voice becomes in his ears as she asks, "Nothing?" after each one.

"Sorry, kid. Only guns and money here," Boba says upon looking through the final crate.

"No!" she cries, distraught. "Look again! It’s—it’s painted with white stripes. A Mandalorian helmet—"

"I’ve looked everywhere. I’m looking again right now," Boba says, "and I can’t see any helmet or any piece of armour whatsoever."

"No…" Ada repeats quietly.

The amount of pain laced in her voice brings Boba to a standstill. It clears his mind of whatever protests he previously had for this endeavour. He wants to ask, ‘Is it yours?’ but the question dies on the tip of his tongue, before he’s even opened his lips to speak.

"The Mandalorian’s almost done with the mess hall," Ada says emptily, so void of any feeling that it sends a shiver down his spine. He’s been there, felt that. (He knows it all too well.) "The boss’ office is not far from here. Kill him."

"Understood."

Boba meets two stragglers on the way to the office, both fleeing from the direction Mando went in. When the three of them make eye contact, the mercenaries let out twin gasps of surprise—their last.

The door to the mercenary’s office is ajar. Little wisps of smoke trail out from inside.

A smoking corpse is sprawled on his back on the floor between the door and a computer stand, the blood pooling around him fresh and glistening. 

Mando stands one step away, in the process of holstering his gun when Boba enters. "Took you a while," he says. "Which one of us was overconfident, hm?"

Briefly, Boba has no idea what the man is on about, so caught up he still is in his suspicions regarding the girl. An empty smile comes to his face smoothly, even though his thoughts are far away—he’s had far too many years of this, appearing in full control of a conversation is something that is instinctive now.

Mando scans the body on the floor.

A few seconds later, Ada speaks to them both: "That’s him. Did he scream?"

"Heard him from the hallway, kid," says Boba sadly, watching the mercenary’s eyes empty of life. Whatever this bastard did to the duros, he got off easy. Perhaps Boba should have raced Mando for real and be the one to get here first.

"Fall back. The coast is clear for now. I’ll update you if anything changes. Ada out."

Mando heads out first. "You coming?" he asks from the doorway.

Boba’s gun is still in his hand. He stares at it blankly for a second, then aims it at the corpse and shoots him in the head until the merc is unrecognizable.

"Uh..." Mando stares at him speechless.

"He deserved it. Let’s go." Boba walks past him angrily, relishing in the smell of blood that follows them all throughout the rest of the building.

***

About ten minutes later, they return to the Razor Crest.

Ada’s face is unreadable when Boba casts his eyes upon her—the tiny portion of her that is visible, that is, underneath the folds of her hood. She keeps to herself, back hunched, shoulders drawn in, though it is hard to tell there is any change only by the quality of her voice. 

Boba knows there is more to it than she lets on. 

Whatever occupies the space in between his ribs, it hurts when he looks at her, and it reminds him that he is still alive.

"Does she seem off to you?" Mando whispers to him when they’re both sitting at the front of the ship.

What could Boba possibly say, except that this is a pain he understands?

Before he can figure out his reply, Ada climbs up the ladders and joins them silently, like a shadow. 

It is surprising to see her, in a way, but good.

Boba stands and beckons her closer, offering her his seat.

If she wanted to isolate herself, he would have let her. He knows _he_ cut everyone else off. But she’s here, reaching out without saying a word, without revealing a figment of her thoughts, and Boba senses her wish in a way that almost makes him believe in the Force.

(Or the good of it, at least.)

Ada accepts and sits heavily, letting the backrest support her body without a care.

Boba walks over to Mando’s other side, where the child usually stays, and where the child is now as well, nibbling on a biscuit. Gently, with a movement of his hands that has become ingrained by now, he hoists the child in his arms, sits down, and keeps the little green gremlin on the meat of his thigh, one hand holding onto its tiny shoulder to keep it from tumbling over.

Now that their end of the bargain is done, Mando readies the ship for the journey back.

The woosh of the engines fills the cabin for the initial quarter of an hour, familiar and comforting in a way Boba loves and despises both. Years ago, he was standing next to his father as they were flying through the vastness of space, and it fills him with terrible wistfulness to remember it now. The details have all faded—what his father would talk about, where they would be going, even the particular jobs where Boba contributed to the fight have been laid to waste by the passage of time. Only one thing remains, and that is—his father’s solid presence, sitting next to him, an arm’s reach away. The safety of knowing he was loved and not alone.

He cannot help but think of family, in all the ways that it comes, when he is sitting next to these people.

A Mandalorian who says close to nothing about his life, yet reveals his kindness and inspiring character through his actions, a man so good that Boba fears he might be blinded one day just by looking at him.

The Mandalorian’s child, right in Boba’s arms this time around, a creature filled with just as many secrets, but young, painfully young, and a survivor of unimaginable horrors. Why else would it accept his presence so easily, if not for the _others_ it has seen with his face, once upon a time, when good things still existed in the world?

And then, finally, another child, one at that age when you’re supposed to find who you are, but instead, a child thrown into the world with her roots cut off, with her compass broken. Left adrift without her identity, without her parent. There’s something dangerous here that Boba notices, like the glint of a mirror pointed back at him, which is why he stops there, and doesn’t think of Ada any further.

The Razor Crest is flying dead ahead toward the three moons. Though the leds in the cockpit give enough light already, it is well complemented by the moons, meeting in the middle of celestial silver and warm golds. Cold, offset by the Mandalorian’s ship.

For minutes none of them talks, but from depressing, grave silence, it slowly loses its torturous quality, and turns into simple quiet, as each of them is caught at the mercy of their own thoughts and separately yearning for comfort.

Boba is the first to speak, when they are crossing the large waters of the ocean. It is all-encompassing, no land in sight in any direction, only the body of water, pitch black, here and there the glimmer of a wave reflecting the moonlight.

"Do you never ever take off your helmet, Mando?" His voice comes out hoarse and strained, as if he hasn’t had a drop of water in days.

"Nobody is allowed to see my face," Mando says neutrally. A line he has practiced often enough that he doesn’t even think about it—that’s what he sounds like.

Boba clears his throat. "What if you fall in love? Will your lover never get to see what you look like?"

From the corner of his eye, he sees Ada stand straighter in her seat, not so subtly turning her head toward them.

Somewhat flustered, Mando answers, "Only the closest family is allowed to see."

"I see," Boba says. "But what if you cannot help it? What if it is knocked off your head during a battle?"

"It is secured well to the rest of my armour," Mando replies right away, almost offended at the notion. "It cannot fall off that easily."

"What if someone else unmasks you against your will and you were powerless to stop it?"

Mando turns to him briefly, before looking back ahead at the moons. "I wouldn’t be able to put it back on again. This is the way."

"Your helmet and this Creed you follow are very intertwined, aren’t they?" When Mando hums in agreement, Boba continues, "But is that all that makes you Mandalorian?"

There’s no answer.

No matter. Boba keeps going, aware of the third pair of eyes staring at the side of his face. "Would you stop being one if your helmet was removed? You, a Foundling, with a Foundling of your own?"

"I…" Mando keeps glancing between him and the night sky a few times, at a loss for words. "I would endanger my covert. I wouldn’t be able to go back home," he settles on at last, sorrowfully. He doesn’t sound like he’s reading rules off of a holobook anymore.

"But you would still consider yourself Mandalorian."

"What’s up with these questions?" he snaps, not unkindly. Tiredly, rather. Perhaps sadly, to consider such notions.

Boba shrugs. "I’m curious, that’s all. Indulge me one more time, please?"

A beat. 

A sigh. 

"Fine."

"If you met such an unlucky Mandalorian, what would you think of them?"

Briefly, Boba’s eyes dart to Ada, and she recoils violently at the unexpected eye contact.

Thankfully, the silent exchanges happening between Boba and Ada all fly right over Mando’s head, who is considering the matter too deeply to pay them any mind.

"It wouldn’t be my place to judge," he finally says, each word said carefully, like he is lining up blocks and trying not to send them tumbling over in his haste. "I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I imagine such a person would already be filled with too much regret for me to add more on top of it."

Boba places one hand on his shoulder and leans into him. "You’re a good man, Din."

There’s no immediate response from Mando. Not verbally, at least—he puts one hand on top of Boba’s, briefly, but in those precious seconds, he says more than any word could accomplish.

***

It will take them a handful of hours to get back to the city—plenty of time to grab a few winks of sleep on the way. Boba makes his bed as usual, but calls the duros and lets her rest there instead. It is as comfy as he could make it be, and he even added his green poncho on top of the blanket so that she would be warm enough.

She grabs his hand right before he leaves in a surprisingly tight grip.

"Thank you."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about," Boba replies evenly.

She tightens her hold on his wrist for a second, another gesture he could read many things in if he tried to pick it apart. Gratitude, remorse—hope, if he really wants to be sentimental.

"Get some rest, kid. This feeling doesn’t last forever."

She lets go quietly and lies down, turning with her face to the wall.

It may not last forever, but it always feels like it.

***

Just when Boba's back was getting used to the ridges on the floor in the cockpit, now he has to change places and discover the new, equally uncomfortable world of the cargo hold floor. He sits down with his back against the weapon compartment, and leans on the side of a crate heavily, head full of thoughts and worries. 

This part of Mandalorian culture he has no experience in, though the broad, deeply rooted strokes he recognizes: family beyond species, togetherness in a way so strong that he still remembers his father trying to teach cadets that looked like him what it means to stick together. To care for one another and have each other's backs. Brothers, all.

Mando is busy tucking the kid in the hammock. When he whispers a little ‘good night,’ and closes the panel instead of climbing inside, Boba opens his eyes and watches him closely.

"Is she warming up to you?" Boba asks.

"A little bit. Didn't look like I spilled her drink for one," Mando whispers back. "I'm still confused as to what's bothering her, but if you're here to mediate, I guess we'll be fine."

Boba chuckles sleepily. "What would you do without me?"

"I wonder that myself," Mando says. He kneels on the floor beside Boba.

"Mando?"

"I won our bet."

"I expected nothing less," Boba breathes out, watching him with widening eyes as Mando closes the space between them even more. Less than an arm’s reach away.

"I never said what my terms were," Mando says quietly.

Boba chuckles again for the lack of a better reply. He feels warmth climbing up his throat to his face—from the proximity between them, from the unpredictable development, from the only way Boba’s mind is able to fill the rest of this scene and how much he wishes for it.

Though his voice betrays him, Boba goes for a little humour to relieve the tension building on his shoulders. "I guess not kissing me is a decent reward in itself."

Mando watches him blankly for a second. Then, with a small huff, he says, "You keep joking, but I'd like to think I can see through you now. Close your eyes."

"Mando?"

Mando places a hand over Boba's eyes. He’s wearing his gloves, yet the point of contact is like a fiery handprint across Boba’s face. "Keep them closed," he whispers.

Boba’s breath cuts off entirely as he waits, mouth dry. He squeezes his eyes shut, focusing more on this action than on the sounds he hears coming from Mando, sounds telling of metal unclasping from its proper place, and the quiet hiss of air escaping his helmet. The impulse to look, to _see_ is strong, stronger even when a warm exhale touches his face, but he endures. It ghosts over Boba's nose, then warmer still over his lips. 

"Din," he says, no longer in confusion, but affirmation.

Mando’s breath is shaky too. 

For a few seconds, Mando simply hovers next to him, close enough that they share the same air, then, just as Boba thinks to speak, to say anything at all if only to catch a hold of his thoughts, Mando closes the gap between them, tasting the nascent word on Boba’s lips with his own, soft and pliant.

A little whimper escapes Boba at the contact. Is this happening right now?

By reflex, Boba’s hands twitch at his side, reaching toward Mando. He stops short of grasping his head, afraid of crossing lines that have not been opened to him yet, letting them hang over the sides of his shoulders, the cold touch of the beskar sparking in him a modicum of awareness.

Unlike him, Mando doesn’t have any reservations of this sort. After the initial shock of their meeting passes, he presses harder, his hesitation vanishing like smoke in the wind, and he cradles Boba’s face on both sides, the feel of his fingers like a brand on Boba’s skin.

It’s been a long time since Boba’s last kiss of any kind. So long, in fact, that after the years of wandering the Dune Sea as a dead man, driven forward by regret alone, he doesn’t even remember it precisely. Certainly no entanglement carried this amount of fragility in his chest—it paralyzes him, almost, to be so held tenderly, with nothing hanging over his head except their mutual desire to be close. No reputation. Only the two of them in each other’s orbit.

The long stares, the growing familiarity, the ease with which Mando allowed him to take care of the child—all these little signs come to him at once, in a collage of longing and quiet displays of trust, and when Mando finally puts a hand’s width between them to breathe, he realizes this was never about any challenge.

This is an affection that has been growing between them for weeks now. 

Inevitable, in a way.

Boba only spurred it on before it became suffocating and demanded release on its own.

Mando takes one of Boba’s hands in his and places it over the sharp angle of his jaw, leaning into it heavily. His hair is on the shorter side, but there is plenty of it that some strands cover his ear and tickle Boba’s fingertips. Permission received, Boba caresses the side of his face, swipes a thumb over Mando’s bottom lip. Visualizing Mando’s face is possible—if difficult—but it is not the goal, so Boba lets the physical sensations begin and end there, in the feel of the smooth skin near the temples and down his cheekbone giving way to the stubble on his jaws and the parted, wet lips.

Silence stretches between them lazily, punctuated by their heavy breathing and nothing else.

Being so close to Mando is a comfort.

Boba can't hold back his smile, doesn't really want to anyway—when did anyone ever care about him and not be influenced by his reputation at all? To experience this, to be given this moment, it tastes like a second chance in a second life. Not something he deserves, but he elects to ignore that thought this time around.

Mando chuckles quietly, such a sweet sound. Has Boba ever noticed how much fondness this man's little signs of joy contained? Listening to him is invigorating.

Mando leaves one more peck on his lips, the littlest of touches where Boba knows his face is marred by a scar, then leans back with a soft sigh.

Thoughtlessly, Boba moves forward with him, chasing another kiss.

It is mortifying when he feels Mando place a hand on his chest to keep him still. If Boba's face wasn't burning before, it's certainly burning now, from embarrassment and shock at his own impulses.

It takes a few seconds for the helmet to be put back into place.

"You can open your eyes," Mando says. Only the hoarseness of his voice gives any indication of what transpired between them.

Boba almost doesn't want to, afraid it would be all a dream, ready to be scattered by the light.

"That was…" He clears his throat, avoiding Mando's visor like the sight of it alone burns.

Movement on Mando's side still draws him in like a moth to a flame and he catches Mando correcting his posture, tilting his head toward him in interest.

Ah, the safety of hiding one's face behind metal, such an impenetrable way to mask an expression. Boba does not have that luxury anymore, though as soon as he thinks of his own helmet, lying a few meters away, he realizes he doesn't want to hide this, not now. He’s hidden enough.

So he looks at him directly, letting his mouth give shape to another smile—genuine, hard to keep in control once it appears. 

"Never thought I'd be happy to lose to a Mandalorian," he says, eyes crinkling further as he watches Mando lose all minutiae movements and become a beskar statue. "Dangerous game, gambling. Addicting."

"I liked gambling with you."

Boba laughs quietly. "I always get what I want, one way or another."

"I’d ask how you do it, but I have the feeling you aren’t going to divulge your secrets just yet."

"It’s not all me, Din," he whispers back. "It’s you."

Mando’s exhale is audible as he leans forward and brings their foreheads together in a gentle touch. One of his hands rests heavily at the base of Boba’s neck, so warm and so grounding that Boba wishes he could immortalize this moment in carbonite forever.

His breath fogs Mando’s visor in the seconds they stay like that, simply holding onto each other and taking comfort in each other’s company.

For weeks he’s wanted this, but never realized it truly until today. Like a missing puzzle piece finally falling into place, covering a wound he didn’t realize he had. Not so much bringing more joy, but rather letting his worries pass. Freeing him of a weight he has been carrying for ages.

When Mando stands, the cold air that replaces him has Boba shamelessly reaching out for him and grabbing the tail end of his cape.

"Stay with me, please. Until I fall asleep."

Mando shakes his head affectionately. 

It must be that, for Boba almost hears a quiet chuckle too, and he is filled with such bubbling joy in his blood that he doesn’t care what he must look like at all.

Mando walks the step that separates him from his sleeping space. 

The door opens with a loud, stark _woosh_ in the fragile quiet of the cargo hold. It’s not loud enough to disturb the child—Boba sees one of its ears peeking out of its tiny hammock, where it is sleeping.

Gently, Mando grabs a hold of his duvet and pulls it out, as silently as he can so that the child is not disturbed, then he turns back to Boba.

"Scoot over," he whispers, lightly kicking him in the sole of his boot, "and stop staring at me like that."

Boba moves to one side, leaving enough space between him and the wall that another person could squeeze right in.

Holding his own duvet in hand, Mando sits down next to him and leans on the weapons compartment tiredly. He drapes the duvet over their legs and takes hold of Boba’s right hand, keeping it between his own over his chest.

The solid weight he brings at Boba’s side has him leaning back into him. Boba’s sitting a tad lower—he only has to turn his head slightly to rest his cheek against Mando’s shoulder. The surface of his pauldron is cold and hard, but it tempers the heat in his cheeks, and soon it reaches an equilibrium, warming up as well.

"I need you—" Mando clears his throat and reiterates—"I need your help on this quest, but I don’t think you actually need mine."

"You do enjoy the scenic route a lot," Boba says with a tiny chuckle. "I admit, I may have reached this point faster on my own, but I wouldn’t have had half as much fun."

"Fun?" Mando sounds incredulous.

"Yes. What is there more fun than drawing with the child? You should try it too. You haven’t blessed us with your artistic talent yet, have you?"

"Hah, and give the child nightmares with my stick monsters? Perhaps not."

"I don’t believe you’re that bad. Have some faith in yourself. My—" Boba’s breath stops briefly. He recovers before the pause stretches on too long, but his chest feels numb when he says, "My dad used to say there is no wrong way to play."

Mando hums in agreement.

"You must join us," Boba insists firmly.

"Very well. After we’re done here, we can do whatever you want."

"All three of us? You won’t be standing on the side like you always are?"

Mando sighs loudly. "Yes, all three of us."

"Good."

Whatever tomorrow brings, it will also bring closure. He’s dodged the topic long enough, has let it fester within him for years and years. He has let it die, let it rot, let it turn to dust, but he finds that all that dust has never really left him, only scattered on the inside of his lungs, and taped itself to the inside of his veins like infinitesimal poisonous grains tainting the blood passing through.

A good man such as Din will hear him out. Boba doesn’t deserve him, but for a reason he cannot possibly wrap his mind around, the man is here, by his side, willing to stay despite there being nothing good to be found in this withered garden.

Din deserves to know the truth, and it must be Boba to come forward and confess, and finally meet him in the middle.

Force knows he’s been standing there long enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (*￣3￣)╭♥
> 
> [waves from tumblr](https://maderilien.tumblr.com/)


	11. The Good, the Bad, and the Mandalorian

When Din wakes, he instinctively looks at the still slumbering man by his side. The first thought that comes to his mind is a gentle wish, barely able to be put into words.

 _I want to see you waking up in the morning,_ Din thinks, but that’s not all of it. It’s not just the quiet, domesticity of it. It’s the repetition he wants. Not the act itself, but the habit.

He remembers the kiss like a dream, warm and soft around the edges. A memory full of both love and fear, thoroughly mixed with each other. He’s never let himself be held so completely into the arms of another. He knows how much he _needs_ that barrier between himself and the world, yet last night, taking his helmet off was easier than expected. Such a simple act. There’s something to be said about crushes and infatuation, and what belief springs forth from such a state of the heart.

Time constrains them all now. As much as he wants to linger, they must be closing in on the city, so he has to tear himself away from the sight and return to pilot the ship. The only saving grace is the promise of tomorrow, and all the little things they will do once they can stop and catch their breath.

The duros is up and about when Din enters the cockpit. Always guarded and tense, she somehow manages to make it even clearer whenever he steps in her vicinity. This time around, she doesn’t slink back to her corner, and though clearly contrived and eager to hide her face in the folds of her cloak, she stands by one of the passenger seats and waits for him.

As he makes himself comfortable in his chair, he glances out the screen.

The sun hasn’t risen yet. It’s grey outside, still dark, but the signs of daybreak shape up gradually over the rooftops of the rundown buildings in the distance, piercing through the muddy atmosphere with the promise of beauty even in such a derelict place as this. There is little else except the cyclicality of nature to mark the passage of time in the slums.

Din feels very much like the lightening sky outside: on the verge of a discovery, of being allowed to hold something precious—of being allowed to keep it, perhaps. 

With a tiny smile on his face, he begins the landing sequence. There’s plenty of space to land in outside the city bounds, where nobody should bat an eye at their presence, considering the neighbouring population. Once that’s done with, he checks the holonews on the holopad. Most of the pages are chock-full of entertainment news—that, and the occasional workers’ strike mentioned in small letters, buried at the bottom of the page. As it seems to be everywhere in this world, the lower classes barely scrape by, while the rich come to party at the foot of the hill.

"Let me return to her first," Ada says.

Din startles. He throws a look behind his shoulder, eager to greet the other man, but there is no one there. Strangely hopeful to be _himself_ the recipient of her words, he turns to Ada, and asks in what he hopes is a steady, nonplussed voice, "Won’t she be suspicious of your absence after all?"

"It’s not unusual for me to disappear for a few nights at a time. She’ll think I went chasing spice dreams," Ada replies off-handedly.

Din frowns. How old did this girl say she was? Fifteen?

"What are you going to do after this?" he asks. Though it’s abundantly clear that Ada doesn’t like him, he worries for her still, just a child lost in the Outer Rim.

She turns her head slightly, revealing the outline of her cheekbone and the hard line of her chin. "That’s my business."

He doesn’t sigh but it is a close thing. Why does he keep surrounding himself with such private people?

(He isn’t one to ask such questions, however.)

"Finally!"

Din and Ada both jump at the exclamation and look behind them in unison.

"A civilized conversation I don’t have to coax out of either of you!" says the stranger, palms upturned toward the ceiling in pleased surprise.

A twin pair of scoffs makes its way out of their mouth. They look at each other by reflex—the first eye contact Din’s had with the duros since they first met in the back alley. She is clearly irritated by this, but the way she slumps her shoulders makes Din believe there is still hope for them to understand each other. No more spite—only exhaustion.

A familiar feeling.

"Are we strategizing, then?" the stranger asks, joining them at once. "You should have woken me," he tells Din with fake reproach, eyes crinkled in amusement.

Din says nothing. His face is warming up again, remembering the sight that waited for him when he woke: too deep in slumber, too peaceful, too unguarded for Din to disturb this man, when it looked like he finally found a peaceful night’s rest.

Fearful that the haze settled over him would be noticed, he busies himself with the ship's controls. There's nothing concrete to do, but he checks the temperature outside, the quality of the air, and acts thoroughly interested in these bits of data.

Instead of sitting, the man remains by Din's side, leaning on Din's shoulder with his elbow with all the casual familiarity of years of friendship.

"So. The reason we’re all here this morning," the man starts, giving Ada her cue.

She shifts in her seat, uncomfortable under such attention. "First, the building you’re going to infiltrate is the house of Rhea Dunn—weapon smuggler, biggest deal in the sector. The one you call Xi’n Niang has been living with her for a decade now—around here she's known as 'the Bride,' and few know what she does beyond being Rhea Dunn's proxy."

"But you do," Din says tersely.

Ada’s gaze flickers downwards momentarily, heavy with sadness, before she meets Din’s visor directly. "I do, and I know it very well. Rhea Dunn is away this month, thankfully, but there’s still several security measures to bypass, not to mention the guards and droids stationed around the estate."

"Droids?" the stranger repeats, dumbfounded.

"Madame has many names and many titles," Ada laughs emptily. "‘Mother of Relics,’ to her clientele. You should go in expecting all sorts of horrors. Some of these relics she keeps for herself, for decoration or personal use."

The amount of weight to this woman’s existence puts a damper on Din’s disposition. He expected it to be hard to reach her, but Ada’s words add more anxiety than security to their plans right now.

The stranger pats the back of his shoulder in silent support. Perhaps he's reading more into Din’s silence than usual. "Telling us all this is all fine and dandy, but can you actually _help_ us get in?" he asks.

"Yes. I’m going in first. I can disable a good chunk of the security system, but you won’t have much time to act," Ada explains. Using a personal data stick, she brings up a heavily simplified blueprint of the residence. Highlighted in neon blue, their target’s office pops up on the third floor, at the heart of the compound. 

"Madame has four B2-battle droid units stationed around her office at all times."

"What?" The word escapes the stranger unwittingly—he straightens up a minute later, frowning deeply. "Of course it had to be nasty ones."

Ada's eyes grow big with unspoken horror as she looks off to the side and says, "Believe me, I've walked past them every day for a year and I'm still uneasy."

B2-battle droids are exactly what was missing from this recipe for disaster. Din grimaces. The mere thought of seeing a functional one unsettles him, but better to know preemptively than be caught by surprise in the middle of the fight.

"The rest are mercenaries, nothing out of the ordinary, except there might be quite a lot of them. You must understand why, as both of these women deal with very precious cargo," Ada continues. "I can take down the alarms and their internal communication service, but you’ll have to clear them out on your own."

"Is there anything you can do about the droids?" Din asks.

With an apologetic shrug, the girl simply says, "Scramble their radars." 

She zooms in on the third floor, giving them a full 360º view of the entry points. Two elevators are installed to the opposite ends of the building, and a set of stairs nearer to the center, massive and wide, looking like they belong to another era. Blast doors pepper the place at fixed intervals—Ada brings the system to the forefront of the schematics.

"I will try locking all of these down. There is no direct way to her office, except through the roof, where she keeps her personal ship docked. However, I strongly advise against going that way—the computer there can and _will_ blow anyone tampering with the dome."

The two men mull over the new information in terse silence.

"Remember when I said we might not have enough firepower to take on this woman?" the stranger asks.

"We do," Din states firmly. Plenty of firepower and of armour, in fact. A whole cargo hold of it. "Besides, we also have Ada."

The girl jumps slightly at the mention of her name.

"And I don’t know about you, but after the way she guided us yesterday, I feel confident having her on my side," he finishes softly.

"You’re right." The stranger pats Ada casually on the back. "Lots of skill condensed in this tiny child."

"I’m not tiny," she mumbles. _"Your_ child is tiny."

"Can’t argue with that," says the stranger.

Ada prepares to leave after the sun rises. She lets a few droplets of alcohol stain the collar of her blouse and rumples it further with her hands, putting on a good haggard look. Din worries for her even more now, when he sees how easily she fakes it, for she must have been through this often and not as a disguise. When she catches him looking, she draws her shoulders in toward herself in—shame?

Finally, she exits the Razor Crest with the promise that she will reach out to them later in the afternoon, when Xi’n Niang’s schedule tends to keep her busy in her office, dealing with important contacts via hologram.

***

When it’s just the two of them left, the stranger is visibly more light-hearted and full of life. He looks happy, despite the fact they are preparing for a serious fight. No dread, no austerity, only a tiny smile playing on his lips like waves in an ocean, fading and resurfacing every couple of seconds when he looks at Din again and again.

Din catches these fluctuations a few times and they lift some of the worry off his shoulders. It’s easier to read him because Din feels the same drive. The burden is lighter now, somehow, knowing that the kiss last night didn’t break what they had between them and instead became a source of strength.

"If I were a latero I could hold _four_ guns at the same time. Imagine how many enemies you could defeat with four guns," the stranger muses as he selects his weapons from the locker. "I’d be kinda short, true, but that’d be four times more blaster shots per enemy. Also an extra fifty percent chance for surprise attacks, if I don’t reach their immediate field of view."

Din huffs. "I don’t think I’ve met any lateros before, but I’ve heard of them."

"Oh, they’re decent people. Very skilled and resourceful, when you have so many arms to help you out."

It’s captivating to watch and listen to him as he talks, moving his hands around so animatedly. It makes Din’s heart swell in his chest when he remembers the guarded conversations they had at the start. There was always humour in the stranger’s words, but never like this, so freely given, born out of joy, and not sarcasm.

The man is still talking, his awe turning to whining as he says, "I don’t have enough space on my bandolier for all these detonators."

Din takes the green Mandalorian helmet from the wall, turns it around in his hands and stares down at the dark visor. It feels a bit like staring into the abyss.

He’s made his mind up, however.

"Here," Din says, offering it to the stranger.

The moment the stranger sees what he is being offered, his expression falls blank, and he looks at Din with unreadable eyes.

"Take it."

He does take it then, at the second plea, with hesitant hands and a wounded look on his face. He clears his throat before he says, "Thank you."

Din hangs back, struck by curiosity, fascination, and a modicum of shame when he realizes that this should be a private moment for the stranger, but he can’t turn away yet. There is something mesmerizing about watching him hold that helmet in his hands, about the way he stares into the visor just as Din did, except with a heavier look on his face. What does he see reflected back at him?

Din’s fingers itch at his sides to be the one to place that helmet over his head. To help him put on the chestplate, the pauldrons. To clasp the vambraces on his forearms, trail his fingers down the inner side of his wrist, hold onto his hands. Briefly tread their fingers together. He knows he’s in deep, and after last night, the floor underneath him seems to not exist anymore. It’s not like flying with a jetpack—the weight of it on his back, the tension he needs in his body to stand firm as the device propels him through air—that's difficult. That's hard. This sort of falling right now is easy. Like letting yourself fall in the arms of someone you love.

There _is_ love here. There must be. This must be it.

He shakes his head, as if it could physically bring himself back into focus.

Any second longer he spends thinking about them together, sharing the same warm breath, it will only muddle his thoughts further. Things don’t come freely for Din Djarin. Just like the sacrifices he’s made for the child, he fears another is brimming on the horizon. Love and sacrifice are too deeply intertwined in his heart. He longs to know peace, but no matter how he strains to ignore these thoughts, he knows his luck.

Perhaps the luck of this man will carry him forward. They should be unstoppable together, now that both of them are properly armed.

Warmth fills Din’s chest when he next lays his eyes on the other man. With a reverence that Din cannot quite decipher, the man fixes in place the last pieces of the green Mandalorian armour, and walks from one end to the other of the cargo hold, testing it. 

He is very silent. 

Din would like to ask him something, anything, but all the words that come to mind are useless, foolish words from an affectionate mind.

Was this the man’s own armour? Was it a friend’s? A mentor’s? The familiarity with which he handles each piece reminds Din of the way his own father would suit up. There is something private—intimate, oh so intimate, when it comes to Mandalorian armour. This is something that extends far beyond the rules around their helmets. The very metal it is made of is sacred, like a second skin.

Difficultly, Din wrestles himself away from staring at the man, and tries to bring his thoughts in order. They have a terrible job to do, and in the most dangerous place on this planet at that. They must make it out alive, both of them, and find the info that both their quests rely on so ardently.

They stock up on weapons, from blades, to explosives, to several types of blasters and enough ammunition that the whole district could be razed to the ground should the need arise.

"Have you ever used a jetpack before?" Din asks, watching the stranger put on the green set that came with the armour.

The man exhales in relief when he feels the weight upon his back. He turns his head to catch a glimpse of it over his shoulder, and the cut of his helmet takes Din’s breath away. Is this why he’s been flirted with now and then by strangers? Is this what they saw when they looked at him?

"Yes, I have," the man says, rough, voice faintly transformed by the modulator in his helmet.

Din swallows thickly.

"We got everything we need now," he continues, placing his hands on his hips. When he looks at Din, he stands like a fierce, proud warrior, ready for anything. His armour is rusty, poorly maintained, yet it suits him—mysterious, experienced, worn out by battle, but still standing. Still standing.

"Come here, let me show you how it works," Din says gently. They each take a few steps and meet in the middle. Din catches the stranger’s left forearm in his, caresses the back of his hand before he moves upwards toward the control panel installed on the vambrace.

The stranger lets Din talk uninterrupted. For once unable to see the man’s face, Din feels strangely unmoored, and he doesn’t know when to stop. Isn’t sure where the man is looking either. He is very still, very quiet. Very patient.

Despite being an older model, with a couple of clear mods installed, Din figures out enough of its technology to explain the basics in what he hopes is an intelligible fashion. It helps that the man has flown before.

When they set out, taking flight side by side, cutting through the air like two steel arrows heading toward the wealthy district, Din is filled with confidence. The city spreads out gloomily below them, and the mass of smog that rises in the air gives them slight cover from the far away windows of the wealthy residents. Din keeps an eye on the stranger during their flight, trusting his words of having used jetpacks before, but worried still. The stranger has displayed his fighting skills time and again—it eases some of Din’s concerns, as it should be anyway, now that he is actually more protected than he was on their previous missions.

Ada keeps tabs on them both, more diligent than they’ve ever seen her. As soon as they are within range of Madame Xi’n’s estate, she syncs up with Din’s private channel again. Gone is the taunting tone she first adopted when they talked for the first time, and gone is also the hate. Not entirely, but she is more tempered now, neutral. Willing to compromise.

"You can fly in through the eastern-most window, the one beside the balcony. The glass is heavily reinforced, but it leads to a good choke-point. You can pick off any guards one by one from that room," she says.

As he listens, Din scans the building once more, spotting the place in question.

"I advise you to move fast. I can only hold the rest of the floors locked down for so long. These people have too many fail-safes in place."

"Understood. You’ve got eyes on her?" Din asks.

Ada breathes out loudly into the microphone. "Yeah, I got eyes on her." She sounds exhausted. Another, tinier sigh follows, then some rustling, and finally the duros clicks her mouth. "Whenever you’re ready, Mandalorian."

Din catches the stranger’s attention.

 _‘Ready?’_ he signs, nodding toward the building.

The man nods firmly.

"See you on the other side, kid. Don’t get hurt."

"Good luck," she says. The transmission fizzles out in static.

Din sets aside a handful of seconds to find himself and refocus. This is it.

They cross the distance between the two buildings in one swift burst of the jetpack, smashing through the window quite literally head first. No reinforced glass could stand when hit by pure Mandalorian beskar at such high speeds.

Shards rain all over the floor. As soon as they stand on their own two feet inside the room (a conference room?), the sound of the glass crunching under their boots is deafened by alarms popping up all over the building. A few seconds later, they pause briefly, and an unfamiliar voice speaks overhead with an echo and bad noise artefacts:

"Emergency protocol simulation commencing in 30 seconds. Assemble in the yard."

The stranger’s shoulders shake with mirth. Were he not wearing a helmet, Din is certain he would have heard him laugh quietly. "This girl is clever," he comments. "I’m glad she’s on our side."

With Ada maintaining the other floors under relative control, the two men have a decent window of opportunity to reach the Madame’s office. The security staff stationed on this level responds in uncoordinated waves, confused by their foreign presence and their orders. They do make up with their numbers, which seem endless during the first couple of minutes. Din settles in comfortably in the middle of the action, avoiding hits, returning hits, taking down the men and women as they dive head-first into the fight.

"I blocked all access points to this floor," says Ada. "Madame Xi'n is in her office. One battle-droid is heading toward you from the East."

"Let's get this over with," says the stranger, tilting his head toward the corridor.

Rhythmic, heavy footsteps alert them of the approaching machine far before it rounds around the corner. One of its upper limbs is outstretched, built-in blaster ready to fire.

Din steps in front, throwing his whipcord toward the droid without hesitation. The moment the cable ties itself around the droid’s right arm, Din pulls heavily. There’s no chance he could make it move—it’s massive and heavy—but it opens up a window of opportunity for his partner to act.

At once, the stranger flanks it, shooting its midriff from an off-angle, trying to aim at its chassis through the space where the metal plates overlap.

The droid snaps its hand back violently, sending Din off-balance. He gets a hold of himself and leans back with his entire weight. The whipcord is a tight, tense line between them—the moment he feels the droid try to drag him closer, he cuts the cable, sending them both tumbling in opposite directions.

"I got it!" the stranger yells. He smacks something over the hole he drilled into the metal, then turns tail and runs toward Din. "Up, up," he urges Din to stand, grabbing onto his arm and dragging him to his feet. 

Together, they dive around the corne, and not a second too soon—the tiny thermal detonator explodes inside the droid with a loud bang, making the floor shake and the wall at their back rattle dangerously.

Din peeks over the corner. Black ash is splattered on the walls, and in the middle of the corridor, the B2-battle droid lies in a lump of smoking metal parts, completely deactivated.

The stranger looks over Din’s shoulder too and clicks his mouth. "I hate those clankers," he says.

One target was easy, but three—not so much. Further down the corridor, the rest of the B2 units stand guard as a group, impenetrable.

A shiver overtakes Din at the sight. He may have gotten over his prejudice for droids in general, but this particular model will never not raise fear in the shape of demons in his mind, fear and the taste of ash, the deafening blaster fire and the explosions of the Separatist attack that laid waste to his home.

They focus one target down—the armour is thick, the distance not in their favour, as the metal holds its ground against their guns. The stranger signals him sharply, asking for cover while he propels himself forward with the use of his jetpack. As he byapsses the three battle droids over their heads, he fires a barrage of small rockets from the vambrace of his Mandalorian armour.

Another battle-droid falls to the floor, overwhelmed by the onslaught, but the other two retaliate more aggressively. 

They keep fighting, shooting each other, blaster shots ricocheting wildly in the corridor. Each shot impacts heavily with Din’s armour, driving him off course. The battle droids shoot in volleys, synced up with each other quite dangerously—in the time it takes for one’s weapon to cool down, the other begins its assault, creating an endless rain of blaster fire.

A loud, high-pitched noise gives Din barely a moment to find his footing and throw himself behind cover before the world erupts in chaos around him. The blast radius catches him still, throwing him further back down the length of the corridor, jarring his shoulders and hips painfully where he falls down. His ears are ringing and his thoughts temporarily turn to sludge as he picks himself up from the floor. His body will be mottled in bruises come tonight.

A second rocket flies toward him—he hears it in the air, whizzling, and turns on his jetpack just in time, propelling himself away from the floor. He only makes it a few meters away from the impact area. The walls are blown to bits, showering him in debris and dust. The paintings, the sculptures—whatever pretentious decoration was set up in this wing, it’s all lying in pieces now, scattered all over the floor.

Explosions followed by the dull sound of metal hitting cement alerts him of the stranger’s work. He turns just in time to catch the other man raining down fire upon the battle droids, unleashing a second salve of rockets from his arsenal.

The metal husks drop to the floor, broken to bits by the violent assault.

Breathing heavily, armour singed from standing so close to his targets, the man makes his way over to Din and offers him a hand to stand. "Nice distraction," he says cheekily.

Din accepts the help gladly. An echo is trapped in his skull, ringing dully from all the explosions going off around him. This is not the sort of combat that Din enjoys, but at least one of them seems to be having fun.

"She’s leaving!" Ada shrieks through their shared channel. High-pitched static follows her words, stabbing through Din’s head clean through. "Madame’s heading to the trap door to the roof."

"I thought you blocked all access?" the stranger asks.

"Her private quarters operate on a separate system," the girl explains in a flurry. "There’s something coming from your left! I think it’s another droid?"

"Of course," grumbles the man. 

Standing side by side, he and Din exchange one silent look, gathering their strength from the simplicity of each other’s presence. The stranger inhales deeply, the sound audible over the metal covering his face, then gives Din a pat on the shoulder.

"I’ll handle it. Find the target."

"Not alone," Din insists, cold washing over him. "I won’t let you."

"She’s getting away," Ada reminds them furiously through the incessant noise of typing and clanking keys. "I’m trying to stall her and keep the hangar locked. Hurry up!"

 _"Go,"_ stresses the stranger. "You know me. You said it yourself, didn’t you? I don’t need you."

Din can’t bring himself to speak. Any word would feel like a curse, somehow. Instead, he brings their helmets together briefly and hopes that says enough.

It takes an enormous amount of willpower to turn away, but Din manages it despite the way it hurts him like an open wound.

***

Fate—not so blind—carries him from the corridor to the door of Xi’n Niang’s office. It is solid, heavily carved, depicting three tall aliens standing in a circle around a table, hands outstretched in front of them in sign of an agreement being made. Din barges in through it mindless of the damage his armour causes to the wood.

The office is square, covered ceiling to floor in shelves full of large tomes, marble busts, jewellery stands, hunting trophies and other miscellaneous items. A working station is set up in the center, and right above it, a chandelier hangs from the ceiling.

On the other side of the office, hunched down between two columns of her bookshelves, is the Mother of Relics herself, tinkering with a camouflaged control panel.

At the noise, she turns, putting on a very pleasant, very polite smile on her face.

Xi’n Niang is rather short and stocky, with an unassuming face. Only her clothes bring her close to the status she has cultivated for herself as Mother of Relics: expensive robes, glittery accents on her collar, going down her chest and ending in an exquisite belt at the waist, the sort of attire fit for a Senator at a gala. She looks like a pantoran, except two pairs of horns breach through her hair right above her forehead.

"Are you the one raising trouble among my henchmen?" she asks, turning around from the door. The lights overhead catch on the jewellery on her head, adorning her horns like shells of gold and silver. Her eyes grow wide upon seeing Din. "Hm, a Mandalorian, entering the very core of my lair. I wonder how you’ve managed to do such a thing." She very much sounds like she knows exactly how he has made his way in. Her eyes narrow the longer she stares at him. "I was expecting the other one."

"Surrender," Din says. The sight of her alone is enough to fill him with righteous anger—this is the one who has puppeteered the death of so many! "I will not ask twice."

"How courteous of you to even ask at all!" she exclaims, clapping her hands in front of her chest. "Were it anyone else in your place, they’d have shot first. I won’t, though. Surrender."

"You have nowhere to go," Din says, "and I did not come alone."

Xi’n Niang‘s eyes and mouth twist into a sardonic, cruel smile. "The dead walk with you, Mandalorian, in the metal of your armour and in the shadow of your dear ‘friend.’" She brings a hand to her mouth to hide her growing smirk. "Are we waiting for your boss to arrive? Where is he? I don’t usually let henchmen inside my office, you know."

Din aims his blaster at her without another word. "I don't have a boss."

"Really? Is he blackmailing you, then?"

"Who are you talking about?"

"Are you serious? You don’t know?" She chuckles in disbelief. "You should ask him if he enjoyed serving the Empire. I hear Lord Vader himself would personally request his services."

He shoots at the wall next to her head, the shock of the blast deafening in the office. For all her bravado, Xi’n Niang is still mortal, and she startles violently, a tiny, choked noise of surprise escaping her lips. It doesn’t erase the vividly cruel expression on her face, but does bring it down a notch or two.

"The next one won’t miss," he warns, low and laced with anger. To hear such insinuations about the stranger makes his blood boil. Working for the Empire? _Him?_

"Let me ask you something, before I take my leave," Xi’n Niang says pleasantly, continuing without giving Din a chance to respond. "Have you ever heard of the bounty hunter Boba Fett? Did you know that he died a few years ago? Vanished off the face of the galaxy a handful of years back, ridding this place of one of the best guns for hire out there. I found his ship by chance, on a sand planet in the Arkanis sector, but I didn’t manage to retrieve his armour."

"So?"

"It was Mandalorian armour, painted green. Very fetching. Unmistakable, actually." Her eyes are two half-moons from the amount of utter glee on her face. "Imagine my surprise then, to see him storm my home and destroy my droids."

"It’s just an armour," Din says. "Anyone could wear it."

"We should ask him when he gets here." The pantoran sighs. She shakes her head slightly, as if all the troubles of the world are lying at her feet, and she looks over Din’s shoulder haughtily, rolling her eyes. "Alas, time’s up. Attack."

Metal clashes with the armour on his back in a cacophony of noise. He tries to dodge, but the droid catches his arm before he can move away and wrestles his pistol from his grasp.

The suddenness of it cuts his breath short and floods his body with adrenaline.

It’s a commando droid, slim and silent, a horror from the clone wars that he never thought he’d see again. He shakes where he stands, legs briefly weakening under his weight, the floor metaphorically dropping away underneath his feet as he and the droid regard each other.

He doesn’t have the luxury to stare, however, as another comes up from his other side, appearing out of the dark corner of the office like a phantom, wielding a vibroblade in its metallic hand.

The next few minutes are a painful procession, feeling more like hours than mere fractions of time.

Din blocks their hits easily at first, but soon finds himself doing only that—defending—as the relentless droids slash at him with their blades and push him into the wall with their impressive strength. He hits it head-first, the contact turning his vision blurry for a few seconds and spurring to life the headache planted by the earlier fight against the B2-battle droids. He grabs the hand of the droid nearest to him and holds it within reach as he activates his flamethrower, burning its circuitry at the junction between its limb and its chest.

The other droid wastes no time, driving itself into his side with the cold fury of artificial intelligence. His breath leaves him. As he exhales, bending over in agony, Din desperately wishes he had found a replacement for the Whistling Birds on their journey.

He propels himself away from their grasp, but one of the droids grabs him by his ankle and diverts his trajectory, sending him crashing into the chandelier. He drops down to the floor in a rain of crystals and glass, whimpering in pain. Hitting the floor jars his head, snapping it to the side, sending a stab of pain all along his neck and down to his clavicles. The entire left side of his abdomen is aflame.

Before he can catch his bearings, the commando droid jumps on him savagely, driving one of its hands straight to his neck and squeezing tightly.

Choking, with shaking hands, Din ignores the instinct to grab at his throat, and plunges his own hand forward, grabbing onto the droid’s thin, rod-like neck. Breathless, but furious, he pulls the droid toward him in one forceful motion, knocking its head over his own helmet.

The droid loses its balance, falling to one knee over him.

Moving through the wild, hot pain coursing through his body, he grabs his own blade and drives it through the underside of its shoulder joint, right toward the center of its body. Oil and sparks pour out of the cut, splattering the side of Din’s helmet in black.

The commando droid lets go of his throat. Its limbs flail erratically as it stumbles back, trying to remove the blade from its circuitry.

"Mando!"

A loud shot rings out. At the same time, sparks fly out of the commando droid’s head as it falls to the floor limply.

Din heaves, light-headed, vision blurry and darkness creeping at the edges. As if through a dream, he sees the stranger throw a weapon toward him, and only fate wills it that he would catch it—instinctually, he turns to the other droid and blasts its kriffing head off.

"Mando, are you alright?"

"She’s," he starts, trying to put his thoughts in order, but his voice cracks, "she’s—"

"Let’s go."

The stranger helps him stand. Din is numb from head to toe. He’s surprised he can move at all as they make their way through the narrow corridor connecting Xi’n Niang’s office with the roof.

"OPEN! THE! HANGAR!" the pantoran is yelling, stressing each word in part, vitriol dripping from her voice.

"Access denied," the computer replies evenly.

_"ADA! I RAISED YOU!"_

They find her typing furiously in front of the hangar control board, eyes wide with fury and fear both. Her ship is docked beside her, a sleek, small model that would look more at home somewhere in Coruscant, not this far away in the Outer Rim. Above them spreads a shiny dome, firmly stuck in place despite the incessant commands the pantoran is giving the AI.

Her eyes flit between them with irritation and apprehension as they approach.

Once again, Din finds himself pointing his blaster at her.

This time, Xi’n Niang retaliates, unholstering her own weapon from the folds of her tunic.

"Looking for something?" she asks, melodious and sly despite the desperation and sweat beading at her temples.

Din almost pulls the trigger when the stranger stops him with a gesture of his hand.

Her mouth opens in a desperate grin—the inaccessible ship has finally brought her head back down from the clouds. Does she finally see she is fallible, too? 

"If you kill me, you’ll never find it. I can promise you that, Fett."

The stranger is so tense at his side, surrounded by such a dark presence, that Din feels rather like he’s been doused in ice. Fett? Why would she call him that?

The stranger takes a step forward—"Where is it?"

"The Mother of Relics prides herself on the privacy she offers to her clients."

 _"Where is it?"_

He side-steps Din and grabs her by the front of her clothes.

"Sold and so cheaply, too," she drawls. Din can barely stand to hear her voice anymore, so grating and cocky it is. "You’d think Boba Fett would leave a legacy behind, but unlike your father, you seem hellbent on destroying any hint of one."

The stranger draws his gun within a second. It happens so fast that Din only hears her scream, he himself shell-shocked at the stranger’s reaction.

The woman crumples to the floor limply, hands clutching at her bloody knee. Her gun clatters to the floor, out of reach. It's not a wound meant to kill, but to inflict pain.

"So uncivilised! I can get you your ship back," she musters between her moans of pain. "You will never touch it without my help. My clients are far above your paygrade, bounty hunter. You don't have that ominous shadow looming behind you anymore."

The man—is it really Boba Fett, famous, feared by the entire galaxy? He’s hunched over the pantoran, very quiet all of a sudden, and very still.

Din listens to them in a state of shock.

The Mother of Relics continues stiltedly, "Do you really think you could do this on your own?"

"I'm not alone," the man says quietly.

"Oh, I doubt that! I've heard of this Mandalorian—" she looks to Din, face twisted between agony and satisfaction "—and the Empire wants him quite desperately. I wasn’t sure what to expect, honestly. Almost thought you were bringing him in. My wife collects now and then! Hah!"

Din watches the other man, looking for a sign for anything at all, but the armour masks him far too well. There’s nothing he can read on his face, in the tension of his shoulders. Nothing.

Xi’n Niang, "Makes you wonder what imperials would think to contract _the_ one and only Boba Fett, if they needed something very precious."

"No," Din murmurs faintly.

"Which bounty is it? Is it both?" Her laugh ends on a whimper, as she moves and jostles her wound. "You were always far too ambitious for your own good."

"No!" the stranger yells, distraught.

 _It really is him,_ Din realizes. He can hardly breathe. There is warmth pouring down his side. It’s all he can focus on right now, as the ground underneath his feet seems to lose its integrity.

"I let _you_ on my ship, close to my—" Din cuts himself off sharply, somehow feeling even colder than before. An icy claw is burrowing itself deep in his chest, gripping his heart and squeezing it tightly, filling his lungs with the coldness of dead space.

Din isn’t sure at whom he should be aiming his blaster anymore.

"I—I am," the man begins, pained, "I am Boba Fett, but—"

"‘But’" Din repeats with a scoff.

Boba Fett is staring right at him, motionless and silent. He shoots.

The sound startles Din and he looks down at himself, waiting to see what crack in the armour the blood will pour out of.

Nothing happens, however, and he notices then that the stranger’s gun had never wavered from the pantoran’s face.

With one final gasp, she slumps over the hangar floor in a puddle of blood, as red as the Tatooine sky at sundown.

"Din," Fett pleads—what right does he have to plead? To say his name?

Din glares at him fiercely, overcome by such an acute feeling of betrayal that it floods his body in anger. The feeling grows stronger when he sees the other man just standing there, gun pointed to the side, in that blasted green armour. His hand shakes. He lets his weapon clatter to the ground and balls his hands into fists, glad to be wearing gloves, else his nails would have drawn blood. 

"I was going to tell you," Fett says, so quietly, so transformed by the helmet modulator that Din doesn’t recognize his voice at all.

"I’m sure you were," Din replies coldly. "All these months and you were going to tell me right now. What else are you hiding from me?" He can’t even bring himself to give voice to these thoughts. Betrayal burns. Why was he so naive? So. So. Naive.

The other man is standing there. 

He’s just standing there.

It’s infuriating.

A few steps is all Din needs to throw himself at the impostor. Pain flares sharply at his side. More warmth pools out, drenching his undershirt—another headache he has to deal with.

Always, _always_ these things seem to happen to Din when he is injured. When he cannot think clearly.

He shouldn’t have let his guard down. He shouldn’t have given in to his impulses.

Fett doesn’t dodge him. Rather, he lets him barrel into him head-on, the parts of their armour clanging loudly upon impact. Calmly—and it makes Din furious, that this looks like it doesn’t mean a thing to Fett, yet Din is unable to reign himself in—Fett bats his fists away. Catches one of his wrists in his hand and holds it away from them both.

With his free hand, Din reaches for Fett’s helmet. It wouldn’t budge, but he throws himself bodily at him and sends them crashing to the floor. He has to see his face. 

Who is this stranger standing in front of him?

It cannot be the same man who slept by his side last night. It cannot.

They’ve fought before. This is far from Fett’s best, but he’s not retaliating at all.

"Fight me!" Din shouts, snagging his captured hand back and bringing it in a sharp arc toward Fett’s flank. There is softness there, between the plates of armour.

Fett brings his hands to Din’s chest to push him away, but they slide off to his sides instead.

Din gasps in pain when one of them makes contact with his injury.

"You’re bleeding," Fett says in surprise—the first hint of anything since this all started.

"Why do you care?"

Din brings his hands to the underside of Fett’s helmet, both this time, but a wave of searing pain whites out his vision and he falls forward, hitting their heads together. 

Fett presses his hand insistently to Din’s wound. "Stop," he begs. "You’re hurting yourself."

 _"You_ hurt **me** ," Din snaps at him. His head is ringing. Every point in his body is alive with fury and pain and exhaustion. His bones have never felt this heavy before. The weight helps when he presses down with his knee over Fett’s chestplate to keep him down.

As if reading his mind, Fett catches his hand instantly and holds it away from them both. Flames erupt, burning the air next to them angrily. 

Of course he would know how Din fights by now.

"Is that ship you’re looking for even real?" Din growls at his face. "When were you going to act?"

He pulls the knife sheathed on Fett’s belt, whimpering at the pain the movement causes him. If he doesn’t put an end to this soon, the child might be in danger. What’s worse, the child won’t have the faintest idea of what’s to come, because it, in its innocence (unlike Din, who is inexcusable,) saw in this man a friend. A caretaker.

Hurt and fury is all that’s keeping him together anymore. He slashes at Fett’s arm first, catching the underside of his suit. The material tears unevenly, too strong to be cut proper from this angle. It forces Fett to let go of his hand, giving Din the opening to strike him again.

"Please," Fett says, hands vying to grab onto Din. They scuffle on the ground, Din wrestling him with little finesse, driven forth only by the need to make sense of the situation. The man catches him in a chokehold, one arm around Din’s throat, lodged beneath the bottom of his helmet, and the other holding Din’s armed hand immobilized. Din’s wrist hurts from the contorted angle it’s being kept at.

His strength is slowly ebbing away. With the last bit of it, he knocks his head back, the horrible clang between their helmets throwing both men momentarily off-kilter. Din takes advantage of this moment to break free of Fett’s hold and turn around, pressing down on Fett’s chest with his weight. He holds the knife at Fett’s throat.

There is blood on Fett’s armour, a whole trail of it. Not Fett’s.

It stains Din’s waist, the cuisse on his thigh. Links them together proper, in the way Din knows now to be truer than any kiss. 

His thoughts grow hazy, each one easily replaced by anger and hurt, but at the end of the day, he finds he cannot do it.

He can’t do it.

He lets out a shout and drives the knife into the floor next to Fett’s throat.

The momentum carries him to the side and he goes with it weakly, the blood loss finally taking over his body. He falls down, half over Fett’s body, half on the floor, and that final flash of agony as he hits the ground is the last thing he feels before blacking out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes the first part of the story. We're heading into Enemies to Lovers territory now~ 🥰
> 
> I've added the tag 'Unreliable Narrator,' cause I forgot to put it in before and it's going to be really, _really_ prevalent from this point onward.
> 
> Instead of saying sorry, [ I provide this fluffy fanart I made for the previous chapter.](https://maderilien.tumblr.com/post/642115500725387264/the-impulse-to-look-to-see-is-strong-stronger) Hopefully it will bring some comfort, cause there's a lot of hurt coming up ahead. :') Buckle up.


	12. Rushing Waters, Drowning Waters I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting part II of this story with Din's pov!

Din wakes with a shout on his lips and an urgency in his blood that has him sitting up in a flurry, arms flailing to his chest in defense. He opens his eyes, squinting at his surroundings through the pain and the dreadful light, and finds himself on a firm bed in a white, sterile room. Lightheaded, he swims through the muddy waters of his mind to catch a hold of his scattered thoughts and make sense of the situation.

All of a sudden, Din realizes his own body feels light as well, exposed and vulnerable—the familiar weight of his armour is missing from his chest.

 _This_ realization has him sitting up violently, hand grasping at his side—his holster and gun are missing too.

"Relax! You’re fine!" a raspy male voice intervenes quickly, followed by footsteps rushing toward Din.

Din heaves. Pain flares at his side like a stab that pierces him clean through, sending an echo throughout his entire body that keeps him paralyzed for several seconds.

"Calm down, Mandalorian. I’m a doctor." The voice trails off with a series of clicking noises. "Your stuff is right there, see? In the corner. I didn’t take anything."

His helmet is still on. He brings a hand to the side of it, feeling the cold, curved ridge of the cheek as he catches his breath. He doesn’t see anything, actually, though his eyes are open. He doesn’t process any of it.

"I didn’t touch that at all," the doctor reassures him quickly. "I’m not pleased with the lacking medical examination, but I value my life."

"I—" Din’s throat is dry and speaking hurts, still he forces the words out, garbled as they are, "—I have to go. M–my child—"

"—your child is right there," the doctor finishes. More clicking.

Din notices there is a small lump by his side, between his flank and the wall. He looks down with his heart in his throat, and finally his vision clears—there is the child curled up against him, underneath his arm, a bundle of warmth against his skin. A thin tank top is all Din is wearing, thin and threadbare and hanging on him loosely. There are bandages around his midriff he can see through the fabric, covering his entire stomach, up to the bottom of his sternum.

Din’s movement jostles the child awake. It looks right at him as soon as its eyes open and, overcome with distress, it presses its tiny body into his side with feeling. One arm is spread over Din’s abdomen, reaching toward his wound, too small to apply any pressure except the faintest of touches.

He scoops it up in his arms quickly, brings its head to the crook of his neck, and, for a few minutes, he simply holds the child there, one hand supporting its body, the other caressing the back of its head and the sad, down-turned ears.

More gibberish comes from the child, muffled by how squished its face is against him.

"I’m here," Din whispers, "I’m here. You’re safe."

A tentative headache appears at his temples, slowly moving inwards toward the back of his eyes. The past events come back to him stiltedly at first, then they chain together, one tragedy after the next, like a dam breaking loose. He was fighting droids, he was fighting Madame Xi’n, he was fighting the stranger…

Boba Fett.

The name rings clearly in his head, cutting through the pain and the fog around his memories. It gives sense to the scattered events, ties them all together: the man he came to trust so much, the man he knew nothing about, this very same man is one of infamy—of such renown that it should be embarrassing to consider Din's situation, were he not so void of life and beyond the point of caring.

Exhausted and defeated, Din lies back down on the cot. The child rests at the crook of his neck now, a solid weight to keep him anchored in the present.

Fett had good reason to be secretive and Din finally sees what a fool he had been to believe him. To choose to believe in him—all that good Din thought he saw must have been his own projection, easily deluding him once he saw the man getting along with the child, as if the approval of a small child would be enough to accept a stranger into their inner circle. Almost into their clan. 

Anger rises up within him, picks him up from the bed again—was it all a ruse? It was far too elaborate to be a ruse, he cannot believe it, and yet… he wouldn’t have believed Boba Fett to be alive either or to be travelling with _him_ of all people.

A violent chill overtakes his body, giving him a good shake that he feels deep inside to his very innards.

What if that woman was right? What if these remnant Imperials hired this bounty hunter to get the child? The bounty over Din and the Child’s names hasn’t disappeared, they’ve had to deal with it not so long ago, but it is so much more terrifying to consider the target on their backs, when Boba Fett could be the one looking for them.

But why is Din still here, then? Why save him? Why return the child to him?

It doesn't make any sense.

There is cotton in his mouth when he tries to speak. "How long was I out? Where is this place?"

"It looks pretty neat, doesn’t it? I keep it as clean as I can." The doctor steps in his field of view: he is a brown-haired harch, an arachnoid species which Din has seen only in passing, bearing three sets of arms, of which one is currently proudly folded across his chest, while another on his hips. "Unfortunately, this is still the slums. You were brought in seven hours ago."

"I have to—"

The doctor stops him from aggravating his wound, pushing him back on the bed with one hand on his chest.

"Take it easy, man. Don’t undo my hard work." He keeps holding him down, applying just enough pressure that Din’s weak body can’t quite keep up with it, and he has no choice but to lie back down. "You were seriously injured."

"W-where is… the man who brought me in?" His throat all but closes up.

"I found you bleeding on my front porch."

"You’re lying," Din rasps out, glaring at the doctor.

The pair of chelicerae framing the harch’s mouth twitches in reaction. "And if I am, there’s nothing you can do about it." 

The alien steps away. Soon, the sound of drawers being opened and rummaged through replaces their conversation. Metal and crystal clink together softly as the doctor places medical tools on a cart, then brings it to Din’s bedside.

"Half an hour is all I ask of you to be still," the harch says gently. "After that, you are free to go. Do follow my recommendations though, I barely saved your life, though I must admit you are recovering faster than I expected."

"Your fees?"

"Already taken care of."

In the time it takes the doctor to assess his pulse and listen to his lungs and heart, Din gets his nerves under control. A strange mix of disappointment and anger rolls within him, some of it directed toward himself.

All of it, actually. 

How naive could he have been to get so close to a man he knew virtually nothing about? How could he not question the prolonged silences more? How could he have left himself bare, barer than he is right now in front of this doctor, who has seen what he looks like on the inside, and not expect any heartbreak at all?

The only good thing that happened to Din was the child, and even the child someone else put in his arms.

At least he held on, and though hardship doesn’t seem to let them go from its grasp either, Din desperately hopes the child is happy with him.

"You’re decently healthy," the doctor says at last. He keeps a tiny screen above Din’s chest and nods, pleased upon seeing the fragmented, patterned line that appears on the device.

Din can see it mirrored from the other side and watches silently as the beating of his heart is translated into that repetitive broken line. All sharp points and hard angles.

The doctor steps away from him and gives him some space to breathe. The examination is not over, however, as he stands there hesitating for a minute, before speaking very gently: "I have to scan your skull."

"I’m not taking my helmet off," Din replies automatically.

"I can set up a sequence of investigations and leave the room. The apparatus doesn’t need me."

Feeling the child’s movements in his arms, the press of its body against his chest, he realizes he has to do it. He can’t afford to be injured with the child in his care right now. Not when they’re on their own again.

"Fine."

"Great! Great, okay, uhh, I’ll turn it on, then you can follow the instructions on the screen. You can read basic, yeah?"

"I can read."

"Perfect!" A burst of energy possesses the doctor, carrying them across the room toward a tiny vanity-mirror-like device, set up with a computer screen instead of a mirror, and two lateral panels to cover the sides of the head as the person looks on ahead. "There’s some antiseptic and some bacta-infused gauze over there on that tabletop, if there’s any injuries on your face."

"Take care of the child," Din rasps out.

"It’s not sta—oh! Uh! Of course, ignore me. Give it here," he walks back toward the bed. There is mild protest from the child when Din holds it out for the doctor to take, but a quiet murmur from the harch settles it down. They look at each other for a few seconds, six red eyes to two black ones. "Shout when you’re done," he says right before he leaves.

Din sits up painfully. He has to keep himself from putting too much pressure on his abdomen—the stab wound is sore and more than eager to remind him of its presence. Beyond that, whatever anesthetic he was under has not yet worn off completely, leaving him half-stumbling, half-dragging his feet toward the sink, both legs numb and prickling with static. He keeps his eyes down at the water tap as he takes his helmet off. 

He doesn’t want to see himself. He doesn’t want anyone to ever lay their eyes upon him.

Still, he has to look and put himself together again.

There is blood on his face. It’s dried now, all the way from his forehead, down the left side of his face, and curving under his jaw. Some of it falls across his cheeks, crossed by two, dried, clear tracks of tears. He doesn’t remember crying. There’s moisture in his eyes right now—he leans closer to the mirror, already feeling a stone lodging itself in his throat. There’s tears in his eyes right now, threatening to fall.

He exhales shakily, trying to gather himself. The antiseptic is very bitter and strong, burning the inside of his nose as soon as he uncaps the bottle. He wipes his face down, pressing down on the dried blood with force, but all it does is remove the traces of hurt, and none of the sorrow.

After, like a dead man walking, he heads toward the medical device. There is a stool right by the screen, on which he sits down heavily. The process takes a good number of minutes, as the doctor set up a decent queue of investigations to be made, which pop up on the screen one after another, requesting Din’s consent individually in order to move from one to the next. He follows the instructions on autopilot, most of him no longer present mentally. This is something happening to an injured 40 year old man with the suspicion of head trauma, not to him.

Someone else’s broken heart in his chest. Not his.

A lifetime later, a message pops up on the screen saying simply ‘Examination over!’

Din puts his helmet back on. The padding around his ears takes away some of his nervousness; he relaxes in the way that apathy relaxes people and steels himself for the journey waiting for him up ahead.

"It’s done!" he shouts, belatedly.

The doctor barges in immediately, hands him the child, then rushes toward the machine to look over the results.

Relief has never felt so much like a weight like it does now. Din smiles down at the bundle in his arms, even though he is the only one aware of it. Perhaps this child could sense it through the Force. Din doesn’t really know how the Force works, after all, but all he can do is hope and smile harder. Him and the child—that’s all clan Mudhorn needs.

"You got off easy," says the doctor. "There’s some bleeding, but it’s between the skull and the scalp—a few bumps, only. Cranial nerves intact… oh, did you know you are myopic? Enough that it may be annoying, actually. Does your helmet account for that?"

"I see just fine," Din says. It’s not his eyes that prevent him from seeing what truly matters.

"Well, if you ever ditch that helmet, you know where to find me. Let me grab some pills and write up your list of recommendations."

"Do I seem like the sort of person who could follow your list, doctor?" For effect, Din stands taller to showcase his bulk and the obvious scars littering his skin.

The doctor huffs. "I have to give it to you either way. What you do after you leave is your own business."

"Whatever helps you sleep at night."

"The pills are for the pain. You’ll be feeling it plenty this week, but if you keep replacing the bacta patch every six hours you’ll be… alright, I guess." He looks very intently at the child and says with some hesitation, "You should keep that little creature around. I think it has some healing powers, but… I feel like I’m going crazy to suggest this, but you wouldn’t have made it without its help. I stabilized you, but I am certain it wasn’t me who kept you from the brink of death."

Din tightens his hold on the child and nods.

"Take care, Mandalorian."

Ten minutes later, dressed and stocked up on plenty (free) medical supplies courtesy of ‘the generosity of the anonymous benefactor,’ Din and the child leave the doctor’s tiny clinic. It’s indeed the slums, for the desolate sight that waits for them outside is well known by this point.

The sun may be rising soon, but it’s hard to tell. Storm clouds have gathered in the sky overnight; the smell of rain lingers in the air still. Puddles cover most of the road ahead, as it is unkept and uneven, ready to display these cracks in the design with the changing of the weather.

Din easily orients himself and sets down the path with his shoulders set, striding as fast as his injury allows him (while also maintaining an intimidating outside appearance, of course.) As he gets closer to the edge of the city, he wonders what he’ll find where he left the Razor Crest—his ship, intact, or perhaps an imperial ambush, ready to strike?

 _He could’ve left you to die,_ a part of him reminds him.

_He could’ve taken the child and left._

But he didn’t, and that’s where all of Din’s reasonings stop short, unable to go past and explain why.

It is the Razor Crest waiting for him, untouched. He enters it with his guard up, scanning for danger, but there is none. The ship is empty of life.

He goes up to the cockpit to investigate further, conflicted with himself. Everything is as they’d left them a day ago, including the crayons spread around one corner of the floor, beside the spot where the stranger used to sleep. Any moment now he expects to turn around and find him climbing up after them, about to dish out some joke or another.

No one comes.

Din walks to the front of the ship—

—his knees do give out then and so does the last part of him keeping him from breaking down entirely. Tears spring in his eyes and slide down his cheeks. He holds onto the child as if it is the last stable thing in the world.

On the pilot’s chair, Boba Fett’s armour is arranged in a neat pile, the dented, rusted helmet placed on top of it all, staring back at Din with flecks of dried blood splattered on its sides in the shape of fingertips.

In that moment, the reality of the situation settles in like a heavy drape falling over his shoulders, so heavy that it brings him down to his knees, one hand on the child, the other grabbing the edge of the backrest for purchase. He leans into the seat for support and struggles to keep his breathing under control.

He wants to run away.

He _needs_ to run away. Get away from this place, these memories.

He wants to throw that helmet away and never look at it again.

Was Fett or wasn’t he genuine at any point on this journey? Why would he leave his armour behind, when Din finally (stupidly) gave it back to him?

"Fuck!" Din hits the side of the chair in anger—at the stranger, at himself, at the Empire.

The death of the Emperor was supposed to bring peace to the Galaxy, yet these imperial ghosts keep haunting the world, keep springing up after the rain like poisonous fungi.

And it keeps raining.

He puts the child down in its cradle, then turns and pushes the entire heap of metal to the floor in one brusque movement. The metal is loud and unforgiving as it hits the floor, fuelling his headache further. The helmet rolls away toward the other chair, where it stops with its visor facing away.

Decidedly ignoring the armour from that point onward, he straps himself in and takes the ship elsewhere.

Anywhere else.

***

He sets course for the next sector over, picking a planet at random. There’s no point in trying to mask his trajectory or do anything at all, really, to cover his tracks. If Boba Fett wanted to find him, he knows nothing would stop the man from discovering their location.

Perhaps it was sentiment that stayed Fett’s hand. Why he let them go. Naively, acutely aware of it, but unable to feel different, Din would like to believe at least one part of what he saw was real.

Sleep would make the journey easy, but he is far too awake and corroded by guilt and worry to rest his eyes. No matter how long he lies in his quarters, he cannot ignore the memories rolling in front of his mind’s eye like a holovid, the ups and lows of their adventures together. He cannot ignore the memory of their kiss and he hates himself for it. To miss and to be resentful of the same person at once—it feels like he is furthering the betrayal. Jeopardising his child's safety, with this compromised train of thought.

Soon he tires of wasting time. He leaves the child in its hammock, fast asleep, and tiptoes around the cargo hold until he finds the stranger’s _(Boba Fett’s,_ he corrects himself angrily) bottle of alcohol.

Once Din joked it would see the end of their journey.

It has certainly seen _an_ end and it is certainly not funny anymore.

He goes up the ladder and, as alien as the movement is, sits down on the floor in one corner of the cockpit, shrouded in shadows, and takes off his helmet with shaky hands. It makes a soft, metallic noise as it touches the floor. He tips his head backward against the wall and stares out into the dark, following the shapes of the cockpit not so much with his eyes, but with the ingrained familiarity of home. He brings his fingers over his mouth, pressing down on his lips with the faintest of touches, just to _feel_ something again—

—he chokes suddenly. The sob bursts out of him suddenly, a sharp sound in the grave silence, and he curls into a ball, making himself as small as possible. The wound at his side protests, but that's fine. He deserves it. All the pain and the misfortune. He deserves it.

He stands there the rest of the night and drinks until there is nothing left.

***

The child is indisposed. Unlike other times, it is not agitated at all, only sitting quietly where Din directs it to sit with an obedience Din has rarely seen, but that is exactly the problem. The child is quiet. It hurts even more if he thinks about it—he wasn’t the only one to get attached to that mysterious man from Tatooine.

"Please," he tells the child, pushing its tiny plate stacked with food closer to its hands. "You have to eat something."

It looks back at him with its impenetrable black eyes, silent and unreachable.

"I’m sorry. This is my fault." The words trickle out of him slowly, but the longer he stares at the child, the more keenly he feels the empty spot next to them. The absence in the other passenger’s seat. His eyes easily glide over the items Fett left behind, but they get stuck in the thin air by his side, a contradiction he wants to be rid of, but cannot.

"I shouldn’t have let him get so close to you—to, to us."

The kid’s ears slump down and it looks at the plate despondently for a few seconds, before dragging it toward itself with what could only be apathy.

Is Din’s mood affecting the child too?

He forces himself to smile, adds some cheer to the tone of his voice. "We’re going to get through this, kid. It’s always been just us, right from the start, hasn’t it? This is no different. People come and go. Everybody leaves, at some point."

This doesn’t have the intended effect, but at least the child starts to eat at a snail’s pace. It is progress.

***

The planet Din picks out doesn’t have the slightest notion of what the Mandalorian or the Jedi are. He throws himself head-first into gathering intel, but the search proves fruitless and frustrating, and while his mind is focused on this problem, a discomfort lingers in between his ribs, distracting him frequently.

One evening, returning to the ship from one of his scoops, he finds the child on the floor in the cockpit, sitting on top of a yellow pauldron.

"No," he tells the child firmly. "Let me clean that up."

It replies with a few nonsensical sounds, sounding very much like a child’s protest.

"He’s gone."

As the child stands and hobbles away, something shines in its hands.

"What do you have there?"

The child hugs over the thing quickly and hides it from sight. When Din steps toward it, it hunches down lower, but doesn’t put up any more protests when Din reaches toward it and grabs the thing from its hands.

It’s a memory device, tiny and equipped with a universal port.

"Where did you find this?" he asks, gripping it harder in his fist. He already knows the answer. He goes to the control board and inserts the device into one of the available empty slots. A hologram pops up, displaying a series of coordinates and the trajectory to a planet in the Abrion sector. Far away from the Wheel, this time.

Din stares at it briefly, not sure what to make of it, the impulse to reject and to accept this information bringing him to a standstill, staring at the coordinates emptily.

Movement by his legs distracts him from his brooding—the child is leaning on his leg, hitting the meat of his calf with its tiny fist to get his attention. When it notices he’s looking down, the child lifts its arms up almost with urgency behind its gesture and whines to be picked up at once.

"What’s wrong?" he asks softly.

It must only be the fleeting comfort of an affectionate touch it needs, because it calms down as soon as it is in his arms. A part of him quiets down as well, the incessant thoughts wailing in the back of his mind like a storm. There’s no sign of its stop anytime soon, no break in the clouds for a single ray of sunlight to shine through, but the raging wind slows to a breeze, fainter, no longer intent on uprooting every single one of Din's foundations.

With the child close, he returns to the hologram and accepts it for what it is: a parting gift.

***

Even after Din pointed a gun at him, Fett still helps him and gives him this trail to follow, this series of coordinates that _he_ must know how precious they truly are. Did he ask for anything in return? What has he actually won from the time they spent together? Now that Din thinks about it from this lens, the doubts resurface—what did Boba Fett have to gain? Whatever item he was looking for—was it truly worth so much pain and suffering that he would endanger his own life travelling with them, both wanted by the Empire?

Such a capable man. So resourceful. More than once he’d displayed his drive and ruthlessness, two things that should easily have taken him much closer to their destination than following the roundabout, winding path Din set their course to be. Even so, Boba Fett himself remained by their side.

_"Makes you wonder what imperials would think to contract the one and only Boba Fett, if they needed something very precious."_

Xi’n Niang’s words come back to him at once. What are they all playing at here? Why didn’t he trust Din, after all they had been through? Didn’t he deserve to hear the truth? At the same time, the part that is constantly vigilant when it comes to the child’s safekeeping, that part doesn’t let him rest, sprinkling worries over his shoulders that add entire tons to the weight he already carries.

It could be true. Perhaps Fett’s goal was real and the moment he obtained his item, he would make himself scarce in tow with the child.

Yet, they were supposed to tackle this together.

Look at them now.

Hah.

Din has never felt thrown off-course to this extent before. Not since he became a Foundling.

On Sorgan, he knew he couldn’t stay. It was and it still is what he wants from life: quiet, peace, a family—but what he wants and what he can have are vastly different things. As hard as it was to accept the finality of the separation there (and it _was_ hard), he finds this second separation to the point of intolerable.

He didn’t fully allow himself to picture a life together with that man, but these feelings find a way to worm through the strongest walls, to slither in through the smallest of cracks. A bit like water, love is. It finds a way, shapes and reshapes itself to fit, and over time it wears down even the hardest of rocks until there is nothing in its path and it can flow freely. It did not quite erode Din’s defenses, but it did trickle through, and it pooled around him, rising slowly with the sort of patience only known to the cosmos.

Someone who knows what a bounty hunter’s life is like, someone who can fend for themselves, someone who has seen enough of the galaxy’s worst offences to be able to accept him, deeds and misdeeds—yet Din wasn’t able to extend that acceptance back toward Boba Fett.

What ailment is there for such a wound? A wound made by time spent together—how much more must Din wait for it to vanish? Will it ever let him be? To know what could have been, if only… if only Fett talked first. If only Din listened, after.

The child mewls in its sleep.

Din raises his head a bit, looking in its direction. 

The child is lying down, motionless, probably caught in a dream. 

As he lets himself back down on his duvet, he focuses on the child’s gentle breathing and the hum of the engines, but sleep doesn’t come like it used to. Waking up isn’t the same either. He greets the day with tension in his spine, points of pain scattered across his shoulders and clavicles, and always a lingering headache when he opens his tired eyes.

As soon as he lands the ship on the new planet, Din gets a hold of himself and puts on his metaphorical armour on top of his beskar. He started on this journey to help the child and that is what he is going to do until the matter is settled. Anything else is an inconvenience.

(This statement doesn’t ring as firmly as it did when he started out—it would be lonely indeed to be completely alone again.)

***

Mandalorians have not only been on this planet, but they have left behind quite the first impressions on the locals, varying from awe-struck to downright idolizing, Din finds out.

A handful of merchants by the entrance to their Guild quickly pull him into their conversation the moment they see him on the street. Din watches them carefully from the safety of his helmet. A tiny voice nags him over and over—"Watch your weak points, Mando!"—and he is alone now, must keep all in mind. No one to rely on but himself, once again.

The burliest, most egregiously dressed of the bunch, a besalisk male towering over them all, slaps him over the shoulder hard in what, it seems, is supposed to be a friendly gesture.

Din is moments from immobilizing him, so tense he is.

"Mandalorians! Oh, I love them!" the alien says in a guttural voice, quite heavily accented. "Will you bring us fortune too, kind sir?"

Din regards him blankly, offering no reply.

"You’re late to the party, Mando," another says, a muun female, leaning against the doorframe. She and a human woman stand to the side, studying him with interest, more reserved than the enthusiastic besalisk.

"Late?" he repeats.

"Your friends have already departed," she says.

"Unless you’re here for business…?" the human asks, drawing out the last word alluringly. "There is plenty of business to be had without the Imps."

"What do you mean?"

"Please, let us have a drink!" the besalisk exclaims, slapping Din’s shoulder again.

They relocate across the plaza to a small, cozy bar. A good number of the tables are spread out in front of the establishment, full to the very last chair, leading them to enter the bar in search of a free spot. The conversation inside covers the music playing in the background, so loud everybody is. The human takes the lead, dodging the tables and patrons with ease as she beelines to the back end of the bar, where a set of stairs takes them to the second level of the place, fractionally more subdued in spirit.

"Information usually costs a ship and a bantha, but we are still celebrating. I’m feeling generous," the muun says, sweeping them with a bright, but calculated look in her eyes. "But first, why are you here?"

"I’m… looking for the Mandalorians you mentioned," Din answers slowly, carefully picking his words. Rarely has he been welcomed with such open arms before. "There is something we must solve together."

The muun and the besalisk nod wisely, while the human looks at him with the same greedy glint he’s seen in every salesperson’s eyes. She doesn’t even try to hide herself, confident and set on something—whatever it is, it unnerves Din and he would prefer not to find out.

Drinks are had around the table on the besalisk’s tab, who insists on getting Din his own bottle despite Din’s protests. It, too, is soon passed around among themselves.

"It is respectful to offer everybody something to drink, even if you will not partake in the drinking," he explains to Din in a stage-whisper.

"A custom that we like even better when our guests refuse," says the muun, who is currently holding the bottle and refilling her glass. "Sometimes, making friends is profitable in more than one way. Now, before we waste an hour on cultural exchanges, let us return to the matter at hand. You mentioned the Mandalorians."

"To their health!" the besalisk cheers, lifting their glass rambunctiously in the air.

"Where do I find them?" Din asks.

The human clicks her tongue. "At the pace they’re moving, you might not catch them anymore. They were headed for Trask a week ago."

"Trask?"

"I don’t know any more details than you do. It was the first time I heard about it too, from the Missus."

"What did they do? What Missus?" Din asks, morbidly curious. So rarely he has experienced such a welcome that it feels as removed from reality as he is—perhaps that is why he is so easily taking everything in stride right now. This might as well happen.

The besalisk takes the word, overflowing with eagerness to share the great tale of the Mandalorian deeds in the recent history of their settlement. Gesturing wildly and moving his glass around dangerously close to spilling its contents, he tells the tale with, probably, at least fifty percent more embellishments than required.

This side of the planet has seen an increase in Imperial activity in recent years, with this settlement sitting at its epicenter. Their economy suffered, their tourism suffered, and their trade opportunities significantly diminished due to the Imperials enforcing a select number of trade routes that posed far too many dangers for the average merchant in order to take safely.

While the goals of the Imperials remain unclear, they involved obtaining several precious minerals found exclusively in the region, and the transformation of several ironworks into weapon factories.

"Our morale was underground, literally. No business, no customers, no money to give or to take, just _them_ and their slimy deals," he explains. "It was either accepting to deal with them or starve."

The human sighs loudly. "Of course we accepted their deals, we all have families to feed. No need to sacrifice my wife for the sake of taking the moral higher ground."

"Yes, but then the Mandalorians arrived. A large group led by a woman with this dazzling set of armour. One look at her helmet and you _knew_ she was a big deal."

"All business, very serious, and exceptionally skilled warriors," the muun interjects, obviously full of admiration as well, though in a more reserved manner than the other two. "I had heard stories before, but did not realize the amount of truth to them until I saw it with my own eyes."

"They swooped in, cleared the Imperialist base, and they didn’t stop there—within a week, our families, our friends, our neighbours were all breathing cleaner air, no trace of that disgusting stench of dark posh leather or the sound of their freighters traversing the sky."

"Blessedly quiet," the muun whispers, waving one hand mystically in front of her face. "We could finally hear the bells hanging outside our homes again."

"How many were they?" Din asks.

"At least two dozen with the leader, perhaps more in touch from afar," says the muun.

Could it be an entire covert on the move? How peculiar to hear of such a large group on the surface, however, but not so much to hear about their dismantling the remnants of the Empire.

The three merchants in front of him are all struck by different levels of awe, which slowly intensify as the conversation goes on. It’s easy to imagine what relief these people felt when their faces are so open and their arms so welcoming to strangers, inviting Din to a drink just to share this story.

Something monumental happened here on this planet. Something he wouldn’t have found out about by himself—

He shakes his head, dispelling the thought before it forms in his head. This is not the time to spiral down that path again.

He looks to the besalisk intently, ever glad that he cannot see the conflicting emotions passing over his face as he struggles to get himself back to earth. More firmly than the mood demands, he asks, "Do you have any idea where Trask is?"

Despite his alien face, the emotion behind his smile is clear: ‘No, but I cannot bring myself to refuse you outloud,’ it seems to say, and Din sighs.

Of course things couldn’t have gone smoothly.

He might have caught the group while it was still here, had he checked the armour instead of ignoring it in his tantrum.

He bites back his frustration and shame for acting so childishly on the ship, all those days ago.

"You could check in with the rodians down by the spaceport. They have a splendid database of the sectors in this part of the Outer Rim."

So off Din goes toward the spaceport human resources department, ready to wait in line for hours to ask a couple of questions.

***

The change in scenery helps the child a lot. There is a local custom here to hang ribbons and bells outside every other window, making for a gentle, harmonious melody of the air itself when the wind picks up and sends them bumping into each other. A lot of stimuli all around, keeping it distracted from their shared pain.

It’s partly a gamble on his side, but Din notes with satisfaction that the child perks up at the sight of the bells and he lets it hang on his arm as it pleases, giving it a wide field of view and always keeping an eye on its movements.

The crowds let them pass easily, quiet reverence in the eyes of some locals. 

In the eyes of a gaggle of children, Din finds hope.

For a single moment, he is thrown back to his childhood, to the pivotal moment when his life changed and he became a Foundling, and saw in the shining metal armour of a man the image of a saviour—the weight of his feelings then almost crushes him now, to dare picture himself become the same model in the eyes of another child.

He stops in the middle of the street and holds tighter onto the tiny, green bundle, struck by emotion.

It never crossed his mind, never, that _this_ child would stay a Foundling, that it would be his to take care of, to teach, and that it would become his family.

Din always involved himself in the matters of the covert, but not conventionally—his most important goal has always been to provide the Foundlings with food and clothes and everything else they might need to be comfortable. He stayed one step away from the circle, but always looking in, always worried, always interested in their well-being.

To step inside this circle now, he knows it to be an irreversible choice, but as he thinks of it now, as he dares imagine it, it takes shape like a vision before his eyes and shows him as father, able to watch the child grow up.

The universe opens before him, its embrace warmer than it's ever been before.

He comes back to himself gently, with a small smile growing on his face now that this possibility fully exists in his heart, and that there is no fear anymore.

Oddly chipper, perhaps, he starts walking again. He will follow this trail, and when he comes face to face with that Mandalorian woman, he will see where fortune takes him.

***

It takes one full hour of queueing to finally place an inquiry with the staff at the spaceport. With the removal of the Imperialists, the place is buzzing with life, and everywhere he turns he sees the ships are packed with people, and the streets are bustling, and it’s inconvenient, but he doesn’t care, for once content to admire how much life can spring up from the ashes left behind by the Empire.

"Do you intend to travel there?" asks the rodian official at the desk.

"Why?"

The alien shifts and sways on their feet, hesitating for a few seconds. Eyes averted somewhere to his breastplate, they whisper to him, "I know someone looking for transport to Trask. A mother who wishes to reunite with her family."

How could Din refuse?

There seems to be a significant communication issue between him and this mother, however, as an amphibian individual waits for him at the appointment meeting place, and though Din speaks many languages, ‘frog’ is not one of them.

Still, the spaceport official gave him the details he needed: slow speed in order to preserve the eggs and where exactly to land on Trask to reach the amphibian’s husband. There’s little else that Din needs right now, when other Mandalorians are finally within reach.

They waste no time, setting out the very next morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy, uh, Valentine's day! There should be some talk of love somewhere in this chapter... amidst the sea of blue.
> 
> A huuuuge thank to everyone for following this story every week! I am so, so grateful for all of your support! The response to the previous chapter blew me away and I am very touched by your words and kudos and interest in this fic. Thank you so much! We're getting closer to the end and I don't think I'm ready, to be honest! I've been working on this story for four months now, the longest I've ever been involved in a fic before, and it's... it's an experience. My draft's almost at 80k and not done yet, so there's still plenty to come. I will work hard to make these final parts lead up to a satisfying ending! ♥


	13. Rushing Waters, Drowning Waters II

The wind picks up by the time they make it outside the ship. It whips at his face mercilessly, tainted with the wintry undertones carried forth from the faraway mountain peaks. Ada keeps looking back over her shoulder toward the doctor’s house, worried and not trying to hide it even a little bit.

"Why aren’t we staying?" she asks. "Did we have to leave the kid wi—"

"Yes, we had to," Boba says. "Stop asking questions and go back to the ship."

The ship in question is Xi’n Niang’s personal yacht, a SoroSuub Corp starcraft modded to Wild Space and back with reinforcements and armament, whose luxuriant floor is now dripping with fresh blood. Boba’s own hands are black, congealed, and he can’t stand to look down at them. 

Mando’s weight in his arms haunts him like a funeral. 

Barely half an hour has passed and he can’t seem to catch his breath. The nausea hasn’t passed yet either. He clenches and unclenches his fists, yet the phantom memory does not relent. He’s never been squeamish until now, when pain flares in his belly at the stark feel of his hands slipping down Mando’s armour slick with blood.

Somehow, in the minutes between the moment Boba felt the floor crumble underneath him and the moment he handed Mando over to the doctor, he found the last part of him still grounded in reality and managed to cling to that.

Discomfort turns his temper into a wildfire. He marches to the corner of the street, keeping Ada in step with him the whole time. There, where an alcove gives him shelter from the elements and plenty of darkness from the streetlight, he settles in for the long watch.

"Find him a lead, then wait for me on the ship. This will take some time."

Ada hesitates for a few seconds. She seems like she wants to speak, but blessedly shuts her mouth instead and walks away without another word. Boba only watches her to make sure she really leaves, then turns back toward the doctor’s house as soon as Ada vanishes from sight.

It hurts. 

It hurts like all the blood on his hands poured straight out of his own veins. Betrayal, disappointment, bitter vindication—all of these are muddled up together, swimming inside his chest like rotten fish floating in poisonous waters. He knew this would happen. He knew. He still got his hope up, even after deciding long ago to never do that again.

"You don’t have to tell me anything," Din said a long time ago. _He_ started it. He was the one who tended to these smoldering cinders and _he_ was the one who poured water all over the fire in the end. Even so, what did Boba expect? That things would be fine? Could they ever be fine for him?

He’s disappointed by his own naivety, but the cruel, painful satisfaction of knowing how everything would turn out makes him a terrifying sight to behold.

  
  


As sharply as the emotions flare within him, just as hard he stomps them back down with three decades’ worth of experience. He’s been through this before and made it out alive on the other side of grief. He will live this time too, but there might not be much of him left.

The hours pass with him freezing there, standing watch. If anyone sees him, nobody acknowledges his presence, afraid of the unspeakable storm brewing in his eyes. For once, a single look at his face would make his reputation pale in comparison. For once, Boba Fett does not need his armour to strike terror in the hearts of others.

The rain starts and stops by the time Mando exits the house on wobbly legs. 

Boba follows him with his eyes, no more emotion on his face.

Mando is in one piece. 

He stalks Mando all the way to the Razor Crest, keeping a good distance away. It’s close by, but Boba takes no risks—doesn’t want to leave him undefended just yet. Not when he’s so injured and visibly out of it. 

This man most definitely hates him. But this man must make it out of here safely and finish his quest. That’s all that matters.

Getting back to Xi’n Niang’s ship is a hassle. He gets lost on the way in a maze of little alleys and backstreets that do not lead anywhere. For almost one full hour he walks in circles, unhurried, calm, perhaps not really there at all.

A single thought keeps surprising him as he passes building after building, thinking and not thinking about the last months. About budding love caught by an early frost.

_I didn’t think I had anything left to lose._

It turns out the universe really enjoys having the last laugh.

***

"Stop glaring at me."

"What?"

"I said," Ada says, almost a growl if not for the hopelessness around the edges, "stop glaring at me."

One blink later, Boba realizes the duros is directly in front of him, shifting uncomfortably under the attention. He furrows his brows and glares at her—with meaning this time.

"Funny," she mutters, but stands with a sigh and removes herself from his field of view. "So, are we heading there or not?"

"What?"

She clicks her mouth then exhales noisily, as if with her entire being.

Boba turns around in the chair and finds her rubbing at her forehead with one hand, the other placed at her hip in a tense arc. There is a generous amount of space between them, unlike on the… other ship. An entire table equipped with computers and a holo-device rests in the middle. Behind her, the cockpit leads to the spacious, squarish common area of the yacht, and further back to a small cargo hold.

Ada around the holotable and presses a few keys. At once, the hologram of a star chart pops up in the center, showing at first a star sector in the Outer Rim, then zooming in on a specific planet lost amidst thousands of astronomical objects.

"Here. We discussed this one hour ago."

Anger rolls within him, alongside a dozen fiery words to throw her way, but it is not her fault he cannot think, cannot string two words together. He sees the guarded look in her eyes, like days ago when they first met her in the back alley, and it is an uncomfortable reminder of his unsightly state of mind, to bring back such a reaction.

They were past that as recently as yesterday.

Truth to be told, Boba thought he was past many things yesterday.

Voicing each word is a chore, but he manages to grit out, "I am not angry with _you._ I…I just..."

"Yeah, uh, let’s not go there yet," Ada replies hastily, face caught in an awkward, thin-lipped smile. "I know."

 _If only you weren’t here,_ Boba thinks. Alone, he could open the metaphorical wound and dig out the shrapnel, let it see the light of day and let it _die_ in it, but like this? Like this, he puts each brick back and hopes the dam will hold long enough until everybody leaves.

Because everybody always leaves.

"Uhh, Mister?"

He cracks his eyes open.

Ada sways on her feet awkwardly, wringing her hands in front of her stomach.

"Fett," he replies. "My name is Boba Fett."

"I’ve never piloted a ship all by myself, Mister Fett."

"Give me a moment."

He shuts his eyes tightly and breathes in deeply for a few seconds, then stands with an abrupt movement that startles Ada.

She quickly sidesteps him and makes way for him to reach the pilot’s chair. As soon as the copilot’s seat is vacated, she plops down on it, looking more at ease than before, but the uncertainty and apprehension in her eyes persist as she looks at him for instructions.

His limbs hurt with a dull ache, one that more closely resembles utter exhaustion than the bruising one gets after an intense fight. Devoid of strength, he slumps into the pilot’s seat and stares emptily out the glass.

Staying on the move while the girl figures out their next destination shouldn’t be too hard, considering the fuel tank is full, the food stock is at its limit, and they have unfiltered access to the pantoran’s credits. Xi’n Niang clearly liked to be prepared for anything, but that didn’t help her escape Boba Fett with her life.

Still, she was formidable in the ways Boba despises most: with her intellect, her cunning, her knowledge.

No death can take back words already spoken. An idea already planted.

As much as Boba is the one sitting at the helm of the ship, Ada is, despite her previous claim, the one doing most of the work. She looks his way every handful of seconds while going through the lift-off routine.

She hesitates, hand hovering in the air, when she has to input their coordinates and calculate the trajectory.

Boba nods toward the buttons. "Well?"

She types the numbers, lets the computer do its job, then turns to him shyly.

Boba doesn't check the screen right away. He looks at her directly in the eyes, fully aware he must seem more intimidating than usual, and he studies her awkward hovering by the control board—gangly teenager in all aspects except her traumatized eyes. "Have you done this before?"

"Yes?"

"Are you asking me?"

She folds her arms. 

They stare at each other a few moments longer, Boba simply waiting to see what she does, whereas the duros pensive, the gears in her head visibly turning. 

"Yes, I have done this before," Ada decides firmly and locks in the data.

The more lightyears he puts between himself and Mando, Boba finds his thoughts settle like an ocean after the storm.

 _This_ is more important than his hopes and dreams. The mission, the goal, the retrieval of his ship.

It wouldn’t have mattered anyhow if he’d told Mando—Din, _Din—_ his name before. The weight that his reputation carries, the people he’s worked for, the proximity to Darth Vader, he couldn’t deny the enjoyment it all brought him, if Din asked—and Din _would_ have asked, would have wanted to know everything. 

Perhaps, at first there would have been no malice, only his faintly veiled curiosity, which Boba came to know slowly over the course of their travels. His willingness to listen, to know more about each place they've been to, that very same curiosity reflected at him, only—and he can imagine this so well—Din's quiet listening would slowly lose its charm, and he would grow colder, tenser. On guard, once he would realize that Boba's not walking a path toward redemption, but one toward selfishness.

The gradual cold would have killed him, had things gone this way. To… to bear witness to Din retracting his hand.

So, retrospectively, it's good that they parted like this. They finally know each other's names. Din can find his fellow Mandalorian people, and Boba can go home and disappear, forever this time.

Din should be safe.

(One regret exists that Boba cannot reason away.

Did the child understand his words when he explained that he was leaving? Why he had to leave the child with the doctor? Why Din was unconscious, suffering, painted red...

Of all things, he hurts at the thought of making the youngling wait for a member of their family who will never return again.

He'd rather not overestimate their mutual affection, but he's not dumb either, and he knows no matter who he may be, in the eyes of a child he is without fault, and that this departure will leave a mark.)

***

True to her word, X’in Niang protects her customer’s identities far better than anyone else in this business would. Even on her private computer, encryptions over encryptions are shielding the names and coordinates of each individual. Despite Ada’s close dealings with the Mother of Relics, the duros isn’t fully aware of all the security mechanisms in place, so she struggles to crack into the database for several days.

Not even the intel she extracted for Din was as deeply buried as this.

Still, the girl is skilled and adaptable, easily circumventing X’in Niang’s tech once she understands what she’s dealing with.

Boba follows her attempts from the sides. He knows enough about computers to understand what she’s doing, but at some point her mind starts making jumps he cannot explain, and from a knowledgeable supervisor he becomes a witness to the youthful display of cleverness and a malleable mind.

The answer finally comes when they’re lying low amidst a gas giant’s asteroid belt, somewhere lost in the Outer Rim.

"There is supposed to be a trade between the Collector and Xi'n Niang, on the moon of planet Kol Iben in the Arkanis sector. A beskar shipment," Ada reads out from the screen. "The Collector bought beskar before from this team, and Xi'n Niang arranged for a second transaction to be made. She also sent several stocks of weapons and armament this way, for her team to pass onto some Imperials."

"Hold on, you lost me. Imperials? What Imperials?"

"That's what it says here," she taps on the screen insistently. "Imperial freighter. Oh!"

Boba looks over the screen thoughtfully, arms folded over his chest. 

"So we’ve got the Collector on one side, the Imperials on the other, and in the middle, this small team working for Xi’n Niang," Ada explains. "The Imperials are buying weapons. The Collector is buying beskar. The team is basically doing this exchange between them with an outrageous profit percent for their own gain."

"We need to reach the Collector."

"There is nothing on that individual here. Just the details of an appointment scheduled for one of these days."

Boba checks the date with a frown. "That’s tomorrow, isn’t it?"

"We might still catch them if we get there quick enough," she hums.

They’re quite close to the Arkanis sector already, but this means they will have to spring into action as soon as they land. Time is of the essence, and after the deal is completed, who knows how long that person will stick around before returning to their boss?

Ada taps the side of her knee as she thinks. It reminds Boba of Din, a little bit. Sours his mood, somewhat, and he says, quite annoyed, "Let’s go there, then. I’m done chasing these people like a starving dog. You have Xi’n Niang’s team’s location?"

The duros glances at him in reproach at the tone of his voice. "Yep, with pinpoint accuracy, in fact. Next stop: Trask."

***

It's raining on Trask when they exit the ship. Both of them are well protected by two sets of hooded robes, dark maroon in colour, especially fetching when paired with Boba's scarlet armour, borrowed from the yacht's cargo hold. 

The stench of fish and wet bird droppings assaults his nose, bringing with it memories from another era, of larger, more tumultuous waters and the salty air, perhaps from the ocean, perhaps from the disinfectant used on the hallways.

Ada lets out a horrible noise of disgust the moment her feet touch the soil. Holding a hand over her face, she looks (glares) at Boba and says, full of derision, "Didn’t think there could be a place worse than that blasted city."

"Chin up, it's not so bad," Boba says. "Besides, you don't have a nose."

"Just because we don't have the same physiognomy, it doesn't mean I lack olfactory organs," Ada mumbles. "Also, I'm particularly sensitive to birds. They scare me."

"You can stay on the ship, I don't need you."

"Oh, no! You misunderstand, Mister Fett. I'm only complaining for the sake of it."

They walk through the harbour at a brisk pace. As soon as Boba gets a look around and orients himself, he leads Ada quickly through the small crowd. Thanks to the rainy mood, there aren’t many people outside, except for those with business by the oceanside. The water laps at the edge of the harbour forcefully—great waves crash into its side slowly, but intently, with the entire weight of the ocean behind each impact.

There is fish in constant flux between the boats and the land vehicles waiting to pick up the cargo and export it. It’s very clearly a moon most hospitable to those adapted to aquatic life, as most of the aliens here are mon calamari or quarren.

The buildings are boring rectangular boxes with no particular rooves to speak of. They line up beyond the port like canned Frella, full of fish—literally. The conversation dies down as they walk further inland, but the water does not, a distant murmur that dominates the entire place.

Ada watches their surroundings with interest, as much as she’s frowning whenever another seabird lands by their feet, pecking at the ground for food.

"You haven’t seen much of the world yet, have you?" Boba asks.

"Do I look like a weathered traveller to you?" she asks back, every word bitten with annoyance. "Have _you_ seen everything already, old man?"

"I’ve seen enough," Boba mumbles, looking back ahead. They’re on a wide street, walking along the edge of the buildings to the left; small speeders travel down the middle of it, partly covering their conversation with the sound of their engines.

Ada clicks her mouth. "You need to look harder."

"Okay, okay, forget I asked. Let’s focus on the mission."

"So _now_ we’re focusing? Okay, mister."

Thankfully, the awkward silence that pops up between them after that is short-lived. They are nearing their destination by the minute—a simple rectangular two-story building, a bit taller than the neighbouring ones, with a parking area set up by one of its sides.

Boba squares his shoulders and turns to her. "This is close enough for you. Keep me updated."

"I can barely see the building," she comments, "and you’re really going to go in by yourself just like that?"

Boba tilts his head to a side in confusion. "Does it look like I brought anyone else with me?"

"I don’t like—"

"You want to fight?"

"N-not especially but…"

"You’re awfully chatty, kid. Do what I told you and mind your own business." He snaps at her. "I’m going in."

 _"Fine."_

She makes herself comfortable in the space between two buildings, beside a metal trash container. It’s tall enough that she doesn’t even have to crouch to be completely hidden from view while she links her datapad with the tiny device secured to Boba’s wrist. Once that’s done, she tunes in with their target’s computers—with the codes and data from Xi’n Niang’s ship, it must be child’s play to tinker with it by now.

Boba leaves her to it. He approaches the building from the side, mentally calculating all the ways he would have to fight in this case. What sort of weapons to expect, what number in crew, how to be most efficient with the least amount of damage taken by himself. How to account for his new getup, pulled from the storage of the yacht ship, decent armour but not the type he has grown accustomed to for decades. One he must get used to from now on, however.

Ada shows him the security feed, revealing the inside of the place, switching from room to room at regular intervals. There’s some activity inside, but Boba shouldn’t have too much trouble with them. He’s taken on larger numbers of people. He can do this.

He catches his breath for a moment, takes out his blaster, and barges inside through the front door, ready to shoot.

Two quarrens startle at his entrance, only to fall down with twin bullets in the middle of their chest. He goes forward, each step falling down more and more heavily as he settles back in his older skin. The shadow on the wall doesn’t _look_ like Boba Fett, but it feels like him, menacing and terrifying and so, so focused on the mission.

His weapon is also subtracted from Xi’n Niang’s collection, a modded blaster pistol with increased durability which allows it to fire significantly longer than usual, almost like the old WESTAR-34 type that his father had. It’s perfect in these close quarter conditions, letting him plow with ease through the quarren he finds on the corridors. 

Suddenly, a loud blast erupts from the other side of the building, shaking the walls.

"What was that?"

"You’ve got company," Ada says through the static of their comms. "Actually, _they’ve_ got company."

She sends him the feed from the larger room of the place, displaying the quarrens hurrying to defend themselves against an unknown threat outside the view of the cameras.

Boba breaks into a run. He has to get there before his lead all but dies because of outside interference. The sound of fighting guides him to the heart of the action—he bursts in through the doors in the meeting room of the beskar thieves and lays his eyes upon two Mandalorians painted in blue wreaking havoc upon the aliens.

He shoots a quarren reflexively, though his eyes stray to the Mandalorians with growing dread and disgust. The one he recognizes—with her helmet richly decorated in whites around the visor and the forehead—notices him instantly and tilts her head toward him.

"Look what the womp rat dragged in!" she exclaims. They don’t have the time to talk, so however begrudgingly, Boba forces himself to focus on the quarren and secure the base. With his added help, the three of them make quick work of the beskar thieves.

"Looks like the base is clear," Ada tells him privately, her own voice strained. No doubt she has seen what company Boba is in for herself, though her discomfort should stem from a different aspect of it.

Boba ignores the Mandalorians and walks up to the main computer, intent on getting the trade details and getting out of there as soon as possible.

"Didn’t think any of you were still alive," Bo-Katan Kryze says, sauntering toward him. "Certainly not holding yourself as well as you are. Surprising."

"We ain’t met, lady," Boba grunts back, without taking his eyes off of the computer screen. The file containing details about the thieves’ trades is easily located, though it is encrypted and inaccessible without a passcode.

"Hm, I’ve met you plenty in my life. Well, not _you_ you, but you get what I mean." She leans against the side of the desk with her hip, folding her arms. Some of her comes into Boba’s periphery, much to his displeasure. "I have a job for you."

This prompts him to turn his head fully toward her. He’d glare if it weren’t so perplexing to hear such words.

"Excuse me?"

"Woves, get what we came here for. I’ll join you in a minute," Kryze says.

"Yes, ma’am," the other Mandalorian says, then walks away.

"There’s some imps in the area we’re trying to clear out. Could use another pair of hands." She takes her helmet off, revealing red hair peppered with grey and a weathered face. A condescending smile rests on her lips, unwelcoming as hell, and worst of all, she doesn’t seem to be entirely aware of it.

Boba blinks once, yet she remains unchanged in her offer. "You couldn’t afford me," he says, half a laugh.

"Ah" —her smile falls fractionally— "but I forget all of you turned on your allies. You with the Imps here?" She takes out her blaster, waving it in the air in a gentle, but obvious threat. "Should I be worried?"

"You should definitely be worried if you don’t shut your mouth this instant," he snaps, drawing his own blaster toward her.

Kryze lifts up her palms in sign of peace, even goes as far as to take a step back. "It’s all a precaution. What’s your angle? My team and I got here first; we’re taking everything." There is no room for argument in her voice.

"Don’t worry, Deathwatch, you can keep all the credits. What I’m interested in has a different sort of value," he replies casually.

"You—" she sputters, unable to let out another word in the sudden bout of anger and redness that rises to her face.

"Almost didn’t recognize you without the horns on your helmet, Kryze. When did you decide to drop them?"

She tenses up. "I never had any… I _reclaimed_ Mandalore from Ma—I don’t have to justify myself to _you."_

It might come to a fight, after all.

Boba says nothing about it, just turns back to the computer and follows the decryption program as it unlocks the data on the screen. 

She’s close enough for the flame-throwers to be within _very_ effective range, as well as the blaster to drill a hole through his chest without much aim adjustment needed. He has his left hand hovering by the left holster and he’s confident in his drawing speed.

The Mandalorian stands by his side a minute longer, silent as well, stewing in palpable irritation. When the program is done, it lets out a high pitched beep, which spurs Kryze into motion, and she leaves the room, slamming the door on her way out.

"What a bitch," Ada remarks quietly.

"You can say that again," Boba says in between a fit of chuckles. "Damn."

"Don’t forget to transfer me the data," Ada says.

When he meets up with Ada, the girl is ecstatic.

"We got what we needed?" he asks, falling in step with her.

"Yeah, we did! They didn’t redact the details yet—turns out the man was late to the meeting and it only took place earlier this morning."

"Huh, luck does exist in the world."

They walk back toward the oceanside. On the way, a small, unimpressive inn catches Boba’s attention and he nods toward it. "You wanna have a taste of the local marine cuisine?"

Ada wrinkles her nose in distaste. The smell of raw fish clinging to their clothes is about as far away from appealing as that of a wet bantha—there’s a reason that animal lives in the Tatooinian desert, after all. Still, this isn’t enough to deter the duros from nodding (reluctantly) and walking toward the inn.

The air is stuffy inside. A lot of the tables are occupied by mon calamari and quarrens caught in boisterous conversation. In the background, sailor songs in a language Boba doesn’t understand fill the place with cheer; the music plays at a low volume, breaking in and out with bursts of static when the vocals reach higher pitches.

There’s a couple of seats free someplace to the left, at a small round table. They pass the waiter on their way there, and happen to see an unappealing amorphous soup poured into a patron’s bowl. 

Ada freezes next to Boba, regret obvious on her face.

He pushes her forward, rather amused by the entire situation.

"You don’t have to eat. We have food on the ship," he tells her once they sit down.

"I… I need a drink," she says, eyes wide and full of despair.

The waiter comes by their table after, taking their orders (two large samplings of the best alcohol in the port, and some water, just in case.)

"So, the data…" Boba prompts quietly, expectantly.

 _"So,_ the data is decent. It’s the report from one of the teams out on the field, sent right after the trade concluded," Ada says. She sends him part of the text to the device on his hand. "See? Name _and_ the ship ID! I’ll have to check in with the port tower registry to find out if it’s still here, but it’ll only take a minute."

"Well done."

She preens. "I didn’t do much this time, to be honest. It’s child’s play with the Mother’s system at my fingertips."

"Just say ‘thank you’ and leave it at that," Boba mutters.

"Thank you, mister," Ada repeats after him, half teasing, half in genuine delight.

Their drinks are decent. There’s not much flavour to it, but the alcohol burns well, which, really, is what Boba looks for in a drink anyway. He pours half of Ada’s glass into his despite her protests, and only slides it back to her once she stops protesting.

"I don’t care what that criminal let you do," he adds for good measure. "You should be thankful you’re getting this much in the first place."

"Wow."

"Back to the more important matters—"

 _"Wow,"_ she whispers again, wholly offended.

"—you think there’s more of them spread out in the port?"

Ada takes a moment to reply, busy brooding over her (half-empty) glass as she is. "...yeah, I guess. At least four groups were marked as ‘in transit’ in the morning, when the report was made," she says quietly. "Are we… going after them?"

Boba stares down at his drink as he thinks. Their priority is finding a lead to the Collector, but he doesn't want to let these bastards stay in business either. There's very little time to spend looking for the rest of them, though...

"Uh, mister," Ada’s voice takes on a slight tremble and she leans across the table toward him, "don’t freak out. Don’t turn around and don’t freak out."

"What?"

"Shh!" 

She looks over his shoulder with her big red eyes and, whatever it is that she sees, it fills them with fear and steely determination.

"What can I get you?" the waiter asks another patron, somewhere behind him.

"Nothing for me."

Boba’s breath cuts off. He looks up at her in shock and disbelief. The very same moment, her hand falls down on his very tightly, physically holding him back from turning around.

"A bowl of chowder for my friend," Din says.

Ada’s eyes are flickering between him and… and Din; her grip intensifies to the point of pain as her nails dig into the side of his wrist. "Don’t look at him. Think, don’t jump, _think,"_ she whispers furiously. With her other hand, she adjusts the hood over her head, letting it fall over her forehead and the side of her face.

He’s right there. The voice is unmistakable.

 _Why_ is he here? Boba distinctively remembers the intel on the datastick to be for the Abrion sector. A cohort of Mandalorians doing some public, altruistic endeavours that they caught the eye of the Mother of Relics from several sectors away, which in no way Din could have missed. How could he miss them? How?

He downs what’s left of his drink in one go, feeling the burn of the alcohol all the way down to his stomach. It’s so intense for a second that it successfully distracts him from the very reason he is drinking in the first place.

Ada is right. This isn’t the place and it isn’t the time. Besides, he doesn’t want to start any trouble at the inn. Doesn’t want to see Din bristling at the sight of him, or worse.

They have to leave immediately.

The waiter serves the grey mush to the child. 

The child! 

Boba startles, eager to turn again, only to have Ada remind him of their purpose here with an insistent tilt of her head toward the door.

"Others with beskar have been through here," the mon calamari waiter says.

Either Kryze’s minions or…

Boba stills. He finds Ada’s eyes, and both of them keep quiet, listening.

It could be a ploy.

"Who can take me to them?" asks Din.

"I know someone who might help."

The mon calamari walks away. Boba keeps his back to where he thinks Din’s table is for as much as he can, turning to the other side to catch a glimpse of the waiter. He sees the growing horror on Ada’s face and realizes exactly where the waiter is heading: a quarren. Coincidence? 

The two aliens talk quietly for a minute; it feels like an eternity as Boba stands there, thinking what his next move will be. His thoughts scatter, and he can’t seem to find a solution to this, because he could hear it in Din’s voice—the agreement, the trust in this information. Maybe he doesn’t suspect anything yet.

Oh, why is he here, on Trask?

The quarren comes their way and sits at Din’s table heavily. In a grave baritone, he asks, "You seek others of your kind?"

"Have you seen them?"

"Aye. I can bring you to them. Only a few hours’ sail."

Boba can’t listen to them anymore. Can he clear them out without Din noticing? Will they go directly to the quarren’s boat? How does he intervene without revealing himself? There is no way at all that he could step away and leave Din to his own devices. This quarren most definitely isn’t talking about Kryze.

"Keep an eye on him," he tells Ada lowly. "Do not look away from him. Tell me when they leave."

"Where are you going?" she asks.

He takes in a deep breath, then stands as inconspicuously as possible. There is one way to fix this problem _and_ help Din out, actually. As disgusting as it is.

Without giving Ada any more answers, Boba steps away from the table and walks briskly toward the front door. It feels like the back of his neck is on fire, as if the entire inn were looking at him, but that must be his imagination only.

Outside, he searches the port for an hour, looking for the littlest sign of the Mandalorians. If someone had asked him as little as two hours ago if he would seek out Bo-Katan Kryze for help, he’d have laughed in their face, and loudly, at that.

Now he’s scanning the horizon for blue armour, a trepidation in his chest as his heart keeps on beating anxiously. There is dread, too. A lot of it. Some hurt pride, which he kicks down viciously as he finally spots the trace of beskar design—the wind picks up briefly, sending a woman’s robe floating briefly behind her and revealing the metal underneath. 

No time for pride, when such important matters are at hand.

(Besides, he’s doing this to spare his own feelings. Anything at all, if it means he won’t see Din’s rebuttal with his own eyes.)

The dark-skinned woman notices his loitering and tenses up noticeably. It must be another one of Kryze’s people. 

Boba walks up to her fearlessly—there’s a skill in putting on a mask, a skill he’s mastered to a T before, but which now forces him to apply it to the muscles of his face, big and small, not just to his voice.

"I need to speak to your boss," he says.

She cocks her head at him quite condescendingly. "Who’re you?"

"No one. I know something Kryze would be interested to hear."

At the mention of the name, the woman narrows her eyes at him and changes her stance, bringing herself fully to her feet and squaring up her shoulders. They stare at each other for a minute, until a man walks by and stops upon noticing them.

"Oh, you’re that guy," the man comments casually. "You decided you need some credits after all?"

"Where do I find Kryze?" Boba asks again. Blast it, he’s had to say this name out loud a second time now. He needs another drink.

"You know this man?" the woman asks her affiliate, arms folded across her chest.

The man mirrors her, folding his arms as well. "Yep. Did you track us all the way here?"

"You’re not as well hidden as you think," Boba says through gritted teeth. "Can we move on already? I don’t have all day."

Finally, the two give up their little power game and escort Boba inside the building. They pass through a narrow corridor, stopping almost at the end, where one of the doors is propped open. The smell of food wafts in from one of the other chambers, very strong and very warm, uncomfortable and distracting now that Boba’s finally here and about to put his hopes in the hands of this undeserving Mandalorian.

Bo-Katan Kryze is sitting on a chair by the main table in the room, engrossed in reading a datapad. There is little decoration beyond that table—an empty shelf, a ceiling lamp, and a set of dirty dishes set upon the table on the other side from Kryze. Between the table and the wall furthest from the door, a massive amount of boxes lie in waiting to be picked up. The ones Boba can see seem to contain weapons; the barrel of several blaster rifles stick out of the filling material, as if they were set aside to be counted just now.

The heiress of the Clan Kryze of Mandalore (if that even means anything at all these days…) takes her precious time to look at him. She makes eye contact with her Mandalorian minions, a polite, thin-lipped smile growing on her face as she returns her gaze to the device and keeps tapping at the screen a minute longer.

Boba waits to be acknowledged. He has the feeling anything could sway her to deny his request, especially considering their previous conversation, but that’s something he could use, as loathe as he is to think it.

"So," —she clears her throat, doesn’t spare him a single glance— "trooper, how may I be of assistance? Have you changed your mind regarding that offer I made you?"

The trepidation he had in his chest en route turns into drums in his ears; catching his breath is hard, but not impossible. It’s the first step he takes to keep himself from an outburst, and it works. The _audacity—_

"No. I am not helping you."

Kryze scoffs. "Then leave. I’m busy."

"There’s a team still active on the field," Boba manages to say. "They’re luring a Mandalorian into a trap out at sea."

"All the Mandalorians on Trask are under this very roof. All _three_ of us, I mean." She gestures to herself with the datapad, then very pointedly juts her chin out toward her minions. "Do not misunderstand me. Your, uh, origi—"

Boba cuts her off immediately, heart in his throat. "I wouldn’t dare associate myself with you, Deathwatch."

"Shut it!" the woman by Boba’s side snaps, cuffing him over the shoulder. 

At once, he grabs her by the arm, twisting around to immobilize her, but she is slippery, and she elbows him in the face, while the other Mandalorian jumps on him from the other side, grabbing his arms in an uncomfortable hold.

"Stop," Kryze says with a long-suffering sigh. "You’re two against one."

"Bah, as if he could take me one on one!" The woman hisses at Boba, full of venom.

"You wanna find out?" he snarls right back. There’s only the reminder that he’s here for Din that keeps him from throttling them all until he takes them down with him.

The man twists his arm further behind his back until he’s forced Boba down to his knees.

Kryze puts the datapad down on the table with a loud thud. "Enough," she stresses, glaring. It deepens the wrinkles on her face. This woman must be what, pushing sixty? Pity how those who deserve to live seem to die young, and the rest...

(Maybe that’s why Boba is still alive and kicking, despite everything.)

"There is a Mandalorian in danger out on the water," Boba repeats it like a mantra.

"If he’s Mandalorian, then this lowly scum-infested rock should hold no real threat to him," she argues back casually. It _seems_ as if she is not even taking his words seriously, and that’s what angers him the most. The continued display of superiority—this is not worth her time at all, not if she cannot get anything out of it.

"Are you interested in the weapons on board the Imperial freighter?" Boba asks.

The man hovering behind him snaps his arm behind his back painfully. "How do you know about that?" he growls in Boba’s ear.

Even like this, somehow Boba still manages to find the upper hand sometimes. He amazes even himself.

Kryze signals her man to quiet down and leans forward on her knees to get a better look at Boba’s face. "What about it?"

"If you need a hand, this Mandalorian would help you." Oh, he’s going to be sick, bartering with Kryze using Din’s kindness and altruism. He has _no right,_ _no_ _right at all—_

"You couldn’t help this Mandalorian yourself?" she sneers.

Not without confronting him, no, and Boba is weak. He is so weak. Always running away.

"Please," he says quietly, staring at the tips of her boots. "Please, help him."

Kryze stands and walks over to him. There’s mud and blood over her boots, a testament to the work she has been busy with the whole day. He can’t bring himself to move, now that his head is bent so low. Shame itself keeps him there.

"Let’s see what this man’s made out of, then," she addresses her minions. They both let out noises of agreement. "Get your equipment ready while the clone gives me the intel we need."

"Yes, ma’am," they say. The sound of their boots fading away doesn’t make it any more easy to bear being on his knees in front of Bo-Katan Kryze. It’s worse, even. Nobody to hold him down. Just himself, succumbed to this.

"Look at you," she clicks her mouth.

"They’re heading west," Boba says emptily.

"Noted. Should I send him a goodwill message?"

"Fuck you."

Kryze laughs sharply. "Amazing, and I’m the one doing you a favour here. Tsk. Get up and get out before I change my mind."

 _This is for Din,_ he reminds himself as he stands. He and Kryze glare at each other again, but it doesn’t hold the same bite—there’s no way it would, now that he has lowered his eyes before her. She knows it too.

He exits the building in a daze and walks forward without paying attention to where he’s heading for several minutes. A handful of streets away, he notices a strange light flickering on his wrist. Another street away, he realizes that it must be a message. Perhaps one he should open. Ada must be worried.

‘left inn at 1544’  
‘boarded ship 1553’

Boba stares at the clock, trying to make sense of the numbers. 

It’s half past five now.

‘i fixed it’ he types.

‘ah! good’ she replies instantly. ‘meet you @ ship?’

‘yes’ 

***

Nothing gets past Ada’s observant eyes. Nothing gets past Boba’s either, so they have a simple staredown when he returns to the yacht, a quick exchange that lets him know she’s noticed something’s up, but refrains from remarking upon it.

The Collector’s intermediary is a middle-aged man in good health, but not in good physical condition, as Boba soon discovers. Ada reached out to the port communications tower while Boba was busy negotiating with Kryze, and found the man’s ship to be still docked on the northern side of the harbour. She hands Boba the coordinates and off he goes to get what they came here for in the first place.

He reaches a nondescript, absolutely average (maybe even a little rundown) starship. For half an hour he investigates the area, finding no soul around except the birds croaking gutturally by the edge of the planks, and finally infiltrates the ship with a bit of help from the duros. The security systems in place are mediocre, but the computer on board more than makes up for it.

"I can’t access it remotely," Ada grumbles. "I don’t think I can walk you through it either."

Boba would be losing a lot of hair around now, had he any left. He scans the area outside the ship again, tapping his finger on his thigh. What next?

"You up for an interrogation?" the girl asks suddenly. "You’re about to have company in five minutes."

Boba follows the silhouette of the Collector’s man through the glass and sighs.

The man reaches his ship, tense shoulders, not doing a good job of hiding his nerves. He moves like a scared sand mouse, only without any sand to hide it from sight.

When the man pulls the door closed behind him, Boba hasn’t decided yet what he wants to do. What he _needs_ to do however is to act fast, while he still has the element of surprise. Quickly, within the blink of an eye, he springs from the shadow and grapples the target before the man can reach for a weapon.

Rounding his left forearm around the man’s throat, he squeezes hard, feeling the press of the man’s trachea against Boba’s flight suit. The man chokes and throws back an elbow in an attempt at retaliation, but all he manages to do is exhaust himself as Boba remains unmoving. With his other hand, Boba brandishes a blade in front of the man’s eyes, twisting it around until the light streaming inside the ship from a streetlamp is redirected into the target’s terrified eyes.

"I want to meet your boss," Boba says. The desire to be cruel, to be as destructive as he is always made out to be almost overwhelms him.

The target jolts in his arms violently. Even if the man wished to answer, he cannot, as Boba does not let go of his throat.

For a second, Boba freezes, aware of the knife in his hand, so easy to drive in-between their ribs.

It's an act of meaningless violence. He wants to do it precisely for that, but his fingers lock tightly around the hilt of the knife, and his elbow hurts, so tensed up his muscles are, caught between ending or sparing a life.

If the lead is lost, it will be his fault, but does he really care about that right now?

The man whimpers pathetically, growing fainter by the second as less and less oxygen reaches his brain.

Boba lets him fall in a heap of uncoordinated limbs, his own hands shaking from indecision.

"P-please, I don’t—I’m only—" the man stutters, voice as rough as gravel and on the verge of breaking. There’s a lot he wants to say, but he physically cannot get the words out, and the struggle is apparent in his widening eyes, begging for mercy.

"Password," Boba says, towering over the man and every bit aware of it.

There’s tears trailing down the man’s cheeks from fear. An extremely authentic reaction. Perhaps a tad too genuine for this to be a trained official working undercover.

An ignorant delivery man, then? Someone who has no idea what he is carrying and what dangers he is under?

Boba scoffs. Of course the middleman is a bystander. He takes the empty step between them and hauls the man up by the scruff of his shirt.

"N-no," comes a moan in weak protest.

Boba deposits him on the pilot’s seat heavily, then taps on the screen of the portable computer firmly. "Pass. Word."

The man struggles for several minutes to type the entire code—he’s barely holding himself vertical, let alone managing using keys, or even _remembering_ whatever combination is needed to unlock the device.

The deed is done, however belatedly, and Boba finally has the trail he needs to get to Slave-I. He transfers the files onto two datasticks, spares the (now fainted) man a final glance, then leaves the ship.

There’s a distinct lack of joy from this successful mission.

***

Long is the day for those who wake early; longer still for those who cannot sleep at all.

Exhausted, almost underground mentally, he crosses the harbour westward, toward Xi’n Niang’s yacht. The datasticks burn through his vest like two hot coals; he keeps pressing a hand over the inner breast pocket to make sure they’re still there, intact.

Even longer is the day for Boba Fett, who finds himself walking down a darkened road, and catching a glimpse of shiny metal on the other side. He turns his head unconsciously.

Din is standing underneath a streetlamp, face to face with a burly quarren full of venom in his stance. There are more quarrens are lining up behind him—the last, final dredges of this sorry business.

He casts his eyes upon Din. That’s his first and only mistake, truth to be told. The streetlamp is orange next to him, casting Din’s armour in gentle hues that bring out the potential for warmth buried deep within the beskar. Like the familiar glow of the Razor Crest’s lights, before he asked Boba to close his eyes that one time. That one fateful time that Boba cannot get out of his mind.

He trusts Din’s skills. Unlike the ambush the aliens prepared for him on the water, this is more familiar ground. His opponents are right there, in front of him, and though an element of surprise exists, they did not directly jump him—he is no doubt processing which route to take in this skirmish. There is surely no avoiding it.

So, really, there’s no reason to linger in the shadows and watch. None.

But it fills him with—with relief, to see Din standing there in one piece, with his child nestled against his side. Everyday he misses them more. Seeing him now quenches none of that longing. It will probably make tomorrow so much harder to face, when the sun rises and reminds him where he is, who he is. What he has done. What he must do.

"You killed my brother," says the quarren standing in front.

Din doesn’t notice the quarren sneaking behind. There’s more of them, in fact, keeping to the shadows. Boba doesn’t see them from the start either, but once he’s onto the movement in the shadows, the glint of a scope turning toward the child, his blood turns to ice. All of Din’s attention is on the speaker, who positions himself underneath the other streetlight, taking a hard, threatening stance as he looks at Din.

A lot of things happen at the same time.

The safety of several guns is turned off.

Boba reacts instantly, aiming at the aliens blindly, all reflex, no awareness. Simple, pure desperation which carries him forward just enough to bring him into the light.

Kryze and her minions drop down beside Din from the depths of the night sky.

The fight is over in the blink of an eye. Blaster shots ricochet wildly off of the beskar armours, lighting up the place like fireworks, then it is wholly quiet.

Around the start of this mess, Din hunched down over the child and shielded it from the fire with his body. Now he stands back up, checking the little green thing for injuries. It takes him so little time that Boba doesn’t realize how avidly he’s waiting with worry to see if anything is wrong until Din suddenly turns to him.

No, no, no—

"Fett?" Din asks.

He can’t read his tone. What was that in his voice?

 _"Fett?"_ Kryze repeats, flabbergasted.

He exhales noisily, pushing his feelings into the air from his lungs. Out, out, out with it all. There’s nothing to fall back on except anger; his brows furrow by instinct, as if this is their natural state of being, and he glares at him. It’s always easy to give people reasons to hate him. So easy.

The child’s alright, nobody is hurt, Kryze is around also—too many people for Boba to stick around. He steps away from them, holsters his blaster, then heads down the road with a firm speed to his steps.

 _"Stop!"_ Din exclaims. 

He freezes less because of the meaning of the word and more for the unexpected experience of hearing his father's code spoken to him. This secret that three people know now, instead of two. He turns and sees Din reaching out toward him, hand half-extended in the air despite the meters of space between them. 

_"Need, you, talk,"_ Din continues stiltedly. He barely knows any words. Kryze's presence makes them both uneasy—Din glances her way too, not happy about it at all.

"Watch your fucking back," Boba growls, glaring fiercely. He can't stay here a single moment longer. Dead man walking, that's what he is.

Din says something else, but whatever it is, the ocean waves swallow every word.

***

Again Ada waits for him in the doorway of the yacht, silent and full of thoughts. He barrels past her, barely avoiding knocking into her shoulders, and crosses the common area, where he drops the datasticks on the table, then sits directly onto the floor, his back resting against the sofa.

Still by the door, Ada keeps watching him. Her eyes gleam alarmingly in the dim light.

"Ada?"

Just teary eyed, she'd been, but at his question, twin trails of tears slide down her cheeks and her breathing quickens as she tries to muffle her cries.

"Why are you crying?" he asks.

"Because you aren't," she sobs. The words break the remnant self control she has and send her into proper sobbing, loud and broken down by her saccadic breath.

It should hurt to see her like this, but he doesn’t feel anything at all.

He moves a bit to the side, offering her some space to sit next to him, then he closes his eyes, Boba lets his head fall backward, coming to rest on the edge of the plush sofa seating. She wails and wails by his side; her shoulder brushes the side of his arm, accidentally at first, but then she slumps into his side fully, body wracked by shivers. With her knees drawn to her chest, she appears much smaller and more pitiful than ever.

Boba places an arm around her shoulders, giving her a tiny squeeze. It’s awkward, uncomfortable, and, in part, it makes him feel ashamed of himself. How many years has it been since he last shed a tear? You’d think what they’ve been through the past few days would be enough to rouse a tear or two, yet his eyes are dry.

What was even the point of carving these parts of himself out all his life?

"There’s no need to waste your tears, kid," he says, staring at the richly decorated ceiling of the ship. "We are alive, and we are still going forward."

"What is the point?" Ada chokes halfway through her question.

"Doing some good." Boba doesn’t think of himself at all as he says it. "Leaving a place better than when you entered it."

"I don’t have enough of myself left to do that."

Boba hugs her close to his side in reply. "You’re fifteen. You have decades ahead of you." 

In front of his mind’s eye he sees the silhouette of a young boy, scrawny, with eyes that have seen too much. With hands that have been too often covered in blood. With a present so bleak that it seeped strongly all the way into his envisioned future. 

"Nothing is set in stone, bent on following us our entire lives. Choose to be good. It’s as simple as that."

Her sniffles subside.

"What happened betwe—" she cuts herself off abruptly.

Boba sighs. "Ask away."

"What happened between you and the Mandalorian? I thought… you looked unshakeable together."

"Unshakeable," he repeats with a bitter laugh. "I guess that’s what happens when you don’t know the full story."

"I know about Boba F—you, I know about you," she says. She swivels around on the floor until she sits with her back to the small table, facing him. "I heard you died on Tatooine, and that it involved Han Solo."

"Don’t taint this moment with that name, please."

Through her tears and anguish, Ada cracks a smile and a little laugh. "Something did happen, then?"

"Yep. No, I will not elaborate. Next question?"

"You met Cad Bane, haven’t you?" She perks up, eyes wide and curious to Boba’s increasingly despairing ones.

"You’re quite set on bringing up all the bounty hunters I dislike, aren’t you?"

"But Cad Bane is _so_ good! And he’s a duros! He’s like me!"

"Decent fellow," Boba allows, then quickly continues before she has the chance to ask another question. "Are you a follower of the Creed?"

Her expression shuts off at once. "I thought you figured that one out already."

"What happened to you?"

"Misfortune," she says. She pulls up her knees and hugs them tightly to her chest, resting her chin over the forearms. "I’ll… I’ll tell you, one day, if we’re still alive."

.

.

"I got the coordinates."

.

"Yeah, I know."

.

"They’re on the table."

.

"I saw."

.

"We can leave in the morning."

.

"And Mando?"

.

Boba looks blankly across the floor, toward the cockpit cast in shadows. "You should get some sleep."

"Why are you doing this to yourself?" Ada asks quietly, no more tears in her eyes, but all the grief poured into her voice. "I cannot stand to look at you."

"Don’t look at me, then."

She huffs, but doesn’t move away, and they sit there for a while, in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate, hidden title: 'The Believer, take two, Boba Fett ver.'
> 
> I am deathly allergic to the word pr*ncess, so I spared y'all this chapter. Also, Bo-Katan's characterization is mostly based on her Mando s2 vibes. I was quite !!! whenever she appeared on screen in the Clone Wars, but that's just cause the other Kryze to root for was Satine and like. Yeah. Imma pick the unhinged clown over the blandest saltine in the world. Anyway, I didn't go revisit those episodes because I value my time. _So_ , S2 vibes exclusively. SORRY FOR THE ANTI TALK HERE needed to get it off my chest


	14. Energy States

"Which one?"

No answer.

Din frowns down at the two slices of cake in front of him. One of them has a dark, fluffy crumb with a layer of whipped cream coated in red powder on top, and the other is covered in chocolate glaze and peppered with multicoloured sugar sprinkles. It’s hard to say which of them looks more delicious than the other. 

"I will eat both," he warns. "Pick one."

A pair of arms sneaks around his middle, then a solid weight leans against him, warm, like home. He leans back into it with a sigh.

"Haven't we had enough of that red dust?" the man behind him whispers.

Din quietly agrees. He takes the other cake in his hand. The light catches on the colourful decorations strangely. They shine like sequins, or perhaps like the multitude of led lights trailing the sides of buildings bustling with people and music. He doesn't like looking at this one anymore. He isn't hungry anymore, in fact.

"Why do you want this one? I don't think it's any good," Din says. "I'll get a different one, wait here."

He pats the arm around his waist to let him go. When the pressure disappears, he steps away, intent on exiting the Razor Crest. (Is this the Razor Crest?) A single step forward and he freezes, ice in his stomach. His feet are glued to the floor. His body is so heavy he can't turn around at all. There is something in the air that makes it hard to move, like it is holding him in a forcefield.

The emptiness around his waist is almost tangible.

"Wait. Come back," he whispers. "Where are you? I can't see you."

His visor is all fogged up and unclear; he swipes a hand over it, but the blur persists. Is the mist in his eyes? He blinks a few times, trying to clear his vision, to no avail.

The sound of the ocean is deafening. 

It snaps him out of the trance at once. When he opens his eyes on the next blink, it is to the damp pavement of the harbour on Trask and its dim streetlights. He turns around frantically, already seeking the face he desperately wants to see.

"Boba?"

There is nobody around at all. No quarrens, no Mandalorians either.

No child in his embrace.

No Boba Fett.

He walks down the street. The fog reappears all around thickly, covering the buildings, the water, his own body when he looks down at his feet. It hides things from him. Every step is hesitant, like walking down the stairs but unexpectedly hitting solid ground every time. He keeps bracing himself, expecting to fall down, way down.

There!

A shadow among shadows, the shape of it familiar even in the dark.

"Please wait!" he yells—or tries to, except his voice barely works. His legs barely work.

He fights against it. 

The shadow waits. It blends in with the rest of it now, doesn't seem to be anything there anymore, but he  _ knows _ it is, so he pushes forward, desperate to reach it.

"There is so much I want to ask you," he whispers, when he is finally close enough. "Boba—"

He extends his right hand blindly, hopefulness already swelling in his chest,

only to grasp the cold sheet of his bed, while the tension in his body leaves him wholly bitter and defeated.

.

.

.

Again, this?

Never the same dream, but always the same torment at the end, whence he wakes reaching for the ghost by his side. Every other minute he lets his thoughts wander, this bitterness resurfaces like a shiver passing through his body, head to toe—

—So he keeps busy, at first. Goes to Nevarro to fix his ship a little bit, and, perhaps, to see some familiar faces. To stop feeling so alone.

Once the business with the Imperial base is finished, Din returns to the city and meets with Greef and Cara in Greef’s office, where they talk and catch up on all the little meaningless things that have happened since they last saw each other. The child spends plenty of quality time with them, enjoying the reappearance of old friends as much as Din does. He knows they shouldn’t get comfortable, but seeing how much relief this break from their hectic life brings to the child, he accepts Greef’s offer to stay put and recover properly.

Cara Dune is doing well. She has always been aware of her strengths enough to flaunt them with confidence whenever she could, but now she looks like she has grown into her new role as marshal, and, with the trust of an entire community riding on her shoulders, each of her steps has more weight to it.

Were it someone else in this position, Din may have been concerned, as he spent enough time here to consider it his home, but it’s her, and she will do good to the best of her ability. When Din leaves, he will do so without any worry for Nevarro, knowing it is her hands he leaves it in.

Greef is, perhaps, happier to see the child than he is to see Din. Not that Din can blame him. Just like the child stole that mechanic's heart back on Tatooine, it keeps charming everyone within sight like a magnet.

For a moment, Din remembers the other person the child grew to trust more than usual, and this quickly puts a damper on his mood. He cannot use it as a moral compass. Not when it backfired on him so spectacularly.

Redemption is a recurring trait among these people gathered around the table with him (he included, as is the mythrol from the foyer), yet he can’t find it in his heart to consider it as easily in relation to Boba Fett.

Again and again his thoughts turn to  _ him _ —as they should, he reasons with himself, trying to be kinder to his poor, bleeding heart—but no words bring any comfort. He is, pure and simple, confused, and betrayed, and the depth at which the Empire and Boba Fett’s roots intertwine deep inside the earth do not make this matter any lighter to bear.

He’s heard rumours. He knows some things about this famous bounty hunter, and few of them are good. Even fewer, if he doesn’t count the parts about Boba Fett’s skills. Good shot, good tracker, good… good what?

"You aren’t quite yourself, Mando," Greef comments, pulling him out of his thoughts.

Sometimes, Din wonders how they can tell, when he is so thickly shielded by metal from all sides.

"Something troubling you?" Cara asks, leaning forward with her elbow on the table. She raises her eyebrows in curiosity. "How is your quest going?"

Din looks away from them both. The child is sitting on top of a small box stacked upon the chair to bring it closer to the surface of the table. A thin, badly cropped piece of paper lies in front of it, and it is attempting to draw and keeping quite busy without Din’s intervention. Nothing remarkable on the paper, just an amalgam of crisscrossing lines, but it's  _ his _ child’s art. It’s wonderful.

"Ah," Cara lets out a quiet chuckle as she too regards the tiny companion at their side. "I see your kid is expanding its horizons. Where’d you find the time to grab coloured pencils?"

"We stopped at a space mall sometime ago," Din answers.

"A space mall?" Cara’s eyebrows shot up higher than before.

Greef whistles. "Look at those lines! This little one will go far in life. Would you paint my portrait when you’re older, kid?"

The child does not deign him worthy of attention right now.

Thankfully, Greef takes it in stride, the heartwarming smile on his face not wavering at all. "Never disturb an artist at work, I say."

"Needed some repairs, and that was the only place within reasonable distance," Din says. Just thinking about that day on the Wheel is enough to bring another frown to his face. How endless the hours felt, to know the stran…  _ he _ was there, safe, buying food, while Din took care of the vehicle repairs. How full of yearning and affection he had been, to eat in the same space as  _ him, _ to take that first step, knowing that the man would realize the weight of his removing his helmet, and respect his privacy. They were both different people, then.

"Mando," Greef calls out.

"What?"

"You zoned out again," Cara supplies. She’s resting her chin on top of one hand, a dangerous look in her eyes. 

The change in her disposition sobers Din up, makes him realize he lost several good seconds there.

"Something’s wrong, isn’t it?" she asks. "You must tell us, perhaps we can help you."

"I…" he sighs. It’s too hard to bring himself to say this outloud.

"Have you found other Mandalorians?" Greef asks.

"Oh!" Cara snaps her fingers in epiphany. "We have to talk, later. Please come by my office. There are some things in my safekeeping that I do not know what to do with."

"I will," he tells Cara. To Greef, he turns rather hesitantly, and speaks with less enthusiasm than he’d have expected when voicing such news: "I have met other Mandalorians. One of them shared the location of a Jedi with me. I should be heading there next."

"But?" the magistrate prompts.

"There’s no ‘but,’" Din says flatly.

"And yet I swear I heard it in your voice, Mando."

Was he always this transparent, or is he easier to read now that something else, something strong and welcomed—something he himself invited in—shattered his walls from the inside? All his weaknesses, so masterfully hidden, meant only for his own eyes to see...

Din doesn’t wait for them to prod further. "I don’t know if I should contact this Jedi after all."

Greef raises his eyebrows in surprise. Cara, instead, leans back on her chair, arms folded across her chest, narrowing her dark eyes.

"Have you found a safe place for the kid?" she asks, no doubt thinking of their experiences on Sorgan. So different Din’s life would have been, had he found a safe home for the child back then.

"Yes," Din says. "By my side."

Greef laughs sharply, full of mirth and joy. "Well, I be damned, Mando! Finally, some good news on this wretched planet. Does that mean I get to see the little one more often?"

The explosive joy in his voice cuts off any reply Din may have prepared for them. These two care for the child in their own way, just as Din does. They’re all tied together by this creature and the little one probably has no idea how strong its effect on them actually is.

Greef pats the child on its back gently, despite the size of his hand. The two of them exchange a brief look, moment when the child lets out a little garbled noise, prompting Greef to nod encouragingly.

"Yep! The child remembers me," he proclaims proudly.

"You’re a hard man to forget, Greef," Din says.

"Now you’re just flattering me."

They laugh about it, Din’s laugh growing more natural as the jokes pass around the table, lightening the mood up so well that the mythrol knocks on the door and asks if he can join in on the celebration.

So, Din sticks around for a while, turning into Nevarro’s very own temporary ghostly presence.

Cara finds him a tiny house close to the marketplace, on the street behind her office, which offers him great privacy, despite its location. It’s shaped like an ‘L’ and has a tiny garden connecting the two sides. Tall brick walls surround it from all sides, keeping it entirely hidden away from the public.

He doesn’t quite let himself grow comfortable in this new place, but allows himself a moment or two to recharge his batteries. Always on the run, always something ready to strike, waiting for him to grow complacent—there is a point when even Din finds he has had enough.

There is also the fact that the Razor Crest is unbearable to be in. Not as strongly as it was at first, before Trask, when he kept stumbling over pieces of armour, or displaced items, or blankets, or that green poncho, but it’s a relief to sleep somewhere else for a change, more so when he trusts the safety of this house.

During this time, he takes the child to school (built inside the old cantina), and later to the local haunts of the Nevarrian children, where he stands to the side, away from their games, and keeps watch while the child tries to socialize. It has been surrounded by too many grown-ups, and has not seen enough play in a long time.

Despite… Boba Fett’s interest in enriching the child’s daily life, it’s not something that can be solved so easily. Din has no illusions about these few, scattered moments of playtime leaving any lasting impression either, but still he tries. Bit by bit, perhaps there will be something kind to remember of the child’s childhood, years from now.

Meeting the Jedi should prove beneficial even if the child stays with Din. Perhaps this Ahsoka Tano would have some pieces of advice to give him, or a way to help him guide the child when it must learn to control itself. There has to be something Din can do, as powerless as he is in the ways of the Force. Perhaps Ahsoka Tano could give him a proper method of communicating with other Jedi, so that he may reach out to someone else when the child is older.

***

There is a statue of IG-11 in the marketplace, right in the center of it all.

Din notices it while he’s overseeing the child one afternoon. He seeks some respite from the sun and, upon seeing such a thin long shadow on the ground, he thinks to check what structure is casting it—and there stands the droid, several meters tall.

The one entity who saw him without his helmet in thirty years. Not a living being, but, and Din regrets to think this retrospectively only, one worthy of just as much respect. It’s almost cruel, that a droid can be programmed to self-destruct. Inspiring and moving, that a droid would analyze all possibilities and choose to self-destruct in order to protect their lives.

Perhaps what Din needs right now is the cold thought process of such a machine, a hierarchy of decisions and options that he could go through clinically, objectively in the truest sense, and come to a rational conclusion that does not hurt.

Under the shadow of this great fallen warrior, Din ponders what to do, and finds no more clarity than he had before. What he does find, however, is that the child looks pretty cute sitting in the dirt, making shapes out of the muddy soil alongside other small children. They are cooking something that only their creative minds can fully articulate, but the ingredients their special recipe requires cannot be found on this material plane, so they have to make do with the crumbling Nevarrian rocks.

When the evening chill approaches, Din calls the child to him. There is only mild protest—the child has truly learned to be a bit more obedient, in these past weeks, no thanks to Din. He picks it up in his hands, and, under the cover of the early shadows, hugs it to his chest softly, glad they are together, despite everything.

They go to the marshal’s office, catching Cara at the end of her visiting hours. A number of citizens are trailing out of the lobby in the middle of a heated discussion when Din gets there.

"The programme’s closed," one of the locals tells him as the group passes him by.

"That’s all for today, folks!" Cara shouts from her office. "Come back tomorrow unless it’s a real emergency."

"It’s me," Din says.

"Oh!  _ Oh! _ Come on in!"

Her office has clearly not been in her possession for long enough to reflect her personality yet. Whatever taste the previous marshal had, it is all over the place, in the mismatched drapes, furniture, heaps of books, and potted plants lying on every available horizontal surface. Two posters made in outrageously bad taste are plastered to the wall behind Cara, depicting some famous bounty hunters in extremely flattering stances.

Cara is in her chair, behind the desk, which is the only area of the room that is clear and breathable. She pours herself a glass of alcohol, then drinks one third of it in one go, swallowing loudly. "I was wondering when you were going to show up. Sit."

A simple wooden chair is placed in front of her desk, a little ways away from the door. He sits down on it, balancing the kid on his thigh.

"This isn’t going to be pretty," she warns him.

"Believe me, you couldn’t possibly bring me any lower."

Cara squints. "We gotta talk, man," she says, shaking her head. "But first—I’ve been to the sewers. Caught some rats breaking into the pantry, so to speak, and retrieved everything. I’m keeping the armour pieces locked up in the vault here. I don’t know what to do with them, Mando. Are your people coming back?"

"I’m wondering that myself. I don’t know."

"You have no way to get in touch with them? Not even the leader of the covert?"

"She’s not so much a leader as she is a guide," Din says, "and no, right now only blind chance could put us together in the same room again."

"Will you take the armour?"

Din has been collecting enough pieces lately, but he finds he has reached full capacity for dealing with these remnant traces of his culture, for a variety of reasons. So, with reluctance, he says, "I cannot. My ship is wanted as is, and I trust that you will watch over them until we can solve this issue properly."

If it had been anyone else holding these items, he would have hesitated in letting them stay behind, but this is Cara Dune.

As if sensing the amount of trust and respect Din holds for her, she nods at him with utmost gratitude. "Very well. You know where to find me."

"I’ve—" Din stops abruptly, strangely breathless all of a sudden. For too long he has kept everything in his heart. He has to speak now, when he has the chance.

Cara merely tilts her head and waits for him to speak.

"I’ve been meaning to ask you," he begins quietly, avoiding her eyes. "You are an upstanding citizen of the New Republic—"

"Let’s not push it, Mando…"

"—and a marshal in your own right. You’re good. You’re my friend and I trust you with my life."

"What’s going on?" she asks.

"Do you think those higher on the ladder could ever be good?"

Her face hardens in a complicated expression, both cross and confused. "What ladder? What do you mean?"

"It’s… I’ve met someone who worked for the Empire," Din says quietly. By reflex, he brings the kid to his chest, hiding its head in the crook of his neck. "High up."

"I’m not an authority on redemption," Cara says at once. "I wouldn’t even consider that word for myself. You can’t come to me with this."

"I’m trying to understand!" Din exclaims, a tad louder than would be polite. Shame fills him at once at his own outburst. "I’ve no sanctimonious past myself. No one does, but where do we draw the line?"

"Am I a good person in your eyes, Mando? Do  _ I _ think I’ve reached a point to be truly part of the good guys? Can I be good, after I’ve taken so many lives?" Cara pours herself another glass. "Hah, I would love to know the answer to that some day, but the truth is, I don’t think any of us will ever really know what we are."

Does the cause one fights for give a different meaning to the lives lost? Is a life not lost anyway?

Din has killed so many people—how many of them must have had families? Children? Guiltless.

Everything was so much easier when he had only the Creed and the Bounty Hunter Code to follow, and when he was by himself. All of these sins, only his to consider, to let go of as he moved from one target to the next.

The higher meaning the child has brought into his life adds too many layers to everything else. Is  _ he _ good? Is he good enough to be a caretaker? A role model? What can he offer to this child that is fulfilling and full of love and hope for the future, when all his life his hands have been bloodied and used to holding weapons more than holding another person?

"Who did you meet?" Cara asks.

Din shuffles awkwardly on the chair.

"They really did a number on you, huh?"

"It was another bounty hunter," Din replies at last.

"Anyone I know?"

"Boba Fett."

Cara freezes in shock. 

"No kidding," she warns him, her eyes wide and full of doubt. The silence Din falls under speaks volumes, however, and she quickly schools her face into something more neutral. "I see. You’re sure it was him? Last I heard he was—"

"—dead, yes, I know. It was him. Fuck, it was him all along."

By the way Boba Fett looked at him on Trask, the way he spat those words at him, words that could have been an ordinary quip between them had it not been for the tone of his voice, so mad and full of resentment—there’s little else for Din to understand than how steep the canyon separation them has grown.

"Sounds like you got mixed up in something really complicated again, Mando." Her voice goes on a tight, controlled journey from exasperated to fond. She is a force of nature, but in this moment, she allows him to glimpse inside the eye of the hurricane, away from the powerful gusts of wind that keep everyone else a step away from her.

‘Complicated’ barely cuts what Din’s got himself into.

"The kid’s fine?" she asks.

"Of course, why?"

Cara looks at him as if he’s grown another head. "Wait, what exactly does he have over you? Is he blackmailing you? The kid isn’t involved?"

Din chuckles, for the lack of anything coherent to say.

"Mando, now I’m worried."

"I let my guard down," Din explains.

A shaky laugh makes its way out of Cara’s throat, as her lips pull into an awkward, open-mouthed smile. "I think you have to start from the beginning. I’m not following very well."

"This might be something I have to figure out on my own," he settles on, standing up. "Yes, that would be best."

"Mando—Boba Fett?" Cara asks again, still in disbelief.

Din stops in the threshold, his back to her.

"If you need anything, don’t hesitate to come to me. Please."

"Thank you," he says, then leaves.

***

Cara’s work as new marshal in Nevarro is glaringly obvious from a simple walk down the main street. It’s the energy in the air, freer than Din has ever known it, like the people finally allow themselves to be happy even in such a place as this. Several buildings have been repainted, and after the havoc that the stormtroopers and Moff Gideon wreaked months ago, the market itself has had to be reconstructed as well. Though it keeps the familiar paths and shapes that Din knows, it doesn’t feel the same anymore.

It’s a better city, yet sadness creeps upon him the closer he walks toward the sewers.

He’s never walked here as brazenly before, right to the covert’s doorstep in broad daylight, beskar shining in the sun, as he is now. The impulse to hide and sneak in only adds more sorrow on his shoulders—there is no danger he could bring here, nor is there anything  _ in danger _ in the first place anymore.

Less subdued than him, the child watches everything around with large eyes. Din keeps touching the top of its head, right in between the ears, to calm it down, but while Din is used to violence, the child is not. Perhaps it is better that it is this way, and the little creature is not desentized entirely to blood and pain. Better that there is someone left in this world to recoil at such memories.

Descending in the sewers is… 

There’s no proper word for it. 

He doesn’t know what he’s feeling, really, hence the confused, wandering nuance to his steps, carrying him down the set of stairs as if he doesn’t actually know exactly how many of them there are, and which one is chipped, and which one tends to gather water and be slippery.

The distant drip of water with its long, hollow echo is what finally brings Din to his knees. Home, as intimate as it was secluded and cold.

Cara’s warning doesn’t prepare him at all for the sight of all these empty tunnels, razed of all life and of all possessions, the shape of them like home, but on the inside only ghosts.

The child looks around anxiously. No doubt the memory of their escape from the Moff is still fresh in its mind, though it feels like ages have passed since.

Din lets it turn and twist whichever way it pleases to get a good look of their surroundings. He keeps a moderate pace, listening to the water, to his footsteps, and straining to hear the quiet murmurs of his brethren when they were all gathered in this place and happy.

As happy as they could be, in any case.

A decade of memories, most of them ripped away from these walls. Were it someone else here in Din’s place, he could easily imagine the derision—the disgust—as they gazed about the place and frowned upon hearing people used to live here. Nobody should live like this, but some have little choice when it comes to staying alive.

Empty.

Everything is empty.

As he walks from tunnel to tunnel, easily reorienting himself and heading toward the central hub of the covert, Din barely spots any piece of furniture left. They’d had to improvise a lot over the years. Though Nevarro was their home for far longer than other places, they still lived with their belongings packed up, always on guard, ready to leave at the slightest disturbance. Only a handful of rocks still stand, carved to serve as tables, or chairs, or beds further in the maze.

"We kept food here," Din tells the child quietly. Despite his efforts, his voice carries down the sewers as a hushed whisper. The sound of the wind. "The Foundlings would eat at that little table. They don’t get their helmets until they’re of age."

He sets the child down on one of the chairs there. They’re tiny, but the child is tinier, and it looks like it is standing at the top of its very own tower. Din sits down too, with his legs sideways along the table, as there is not enough space for him to fit, and takes out a pack of macarons from the pouch tied to his belt.

At the sound of the plastic wrapping rustling, the child’s ears perk up and it looks at Din in alert, probably already famished.

It doesn’t matter what sort of wrapper it is; they all turn this kid into the most famished kid begging for food in the entire universe.

Din gives it one piece, a garish blue with a more tempered, dark cream filling, and keeps on for himself. Unexpectedly, his hand does not tremble at all as he unclasps his helmet and takes it off his head.

The sound draws the child in, more tempered this time. Curious and expectant.

He looks down at those black, bottomless wells of childlike wonder and sees his child’s face unfiltered by his visor. It’s just them, face to face, each eating a snack.

Just another day for clan Mudhorn, adventurers, gourmets, and aspiring artists.

"Bah?" says the child, in all its eloquence, staring at him almost as if statuesque at the sight of his human face.

"I’ve never told you this before, and I’m sorry it took me so long," Din whispers, bringing a hand over the back of the child’s head, and giving it a gentle caress, feeling the texture of its skin and the wrinkles of its head. "I love you."

The child drops the macaron on the floor.

They stare at it, lying there in between their chairs, and Din sighs. He takes another one out of the pack and hands it to the child with great care, aware of the smile growing on his face. There are so,  _ so _ many reasons to give in to the hopelessness, but the singular joy of having his own Foundling by his side outshines them all.

***

A week and a half of avoiding his ship later, Din wakes one night so full of longing that it carries him across the city, all the way to the Razor Crest, where he sits alone on the floor of the cockpit, staring at the green Mandalorian armour scattered around him.

He starts wiping away the blood (his blood), taking each part gently in his hands. For a second time, he finds himself polishing this old armour set, the only difference being that now he knows full well whom he is mourning.

It’s impossible to let go of Boba Fett. Hard to think of him, harder yet  _ not _ to think of him. The uncertainty that surrounds them and… whatever affection was growing between them, it plagues Din. He doesn't quite trust himself to make the good decision anymore, but that doesn’t stop his mind from fretting over the final hours he spent in Boba Fett’s company.

That kiss that Din himself wanted. That extraordinary joy he felt when he realized his interest was reciprocated. How tightly the man clung to him and how sweet the meeting of their lips was.

How, for that brief moment, Din thought they would be together.

Din was so unreasonable the next day. He cannot help but wonder how much he must have hurt the bounty hunter in turn. What if he had listened? Din Djarin always listens to the other side. Why didn’t he? Why didn’t he give the man a moment to explain himself?

The unbridled betrayal he felt struck him so deeply that it seemed to clear his mind of all thoughts and all memories. A clean slate, the moment the stranger was no longer such a stranger.

Going to Trask shouldn’t have been any more eventful than any of Din’s other missions, yet the impossible happened. Between blaster fire, the noisy jetpacks of Bo-Katan Kryze’s team, the darkness and the streetlights, Boba Fett appeared out of the shadows to—to what? To cover his flank the very minute Din became so,  _ so _ acutely aware of the emptiness at his side? Right when the number of the quarren edged on overwhelming, when he worried for the child in his hands—right there to see him again?

Nevermind the Mandalorian heiress’ intervention, so clinical and reeking of her own interests in the matter. A single thing lives on at the forefront of his mind, and that thing is the brief glimpse he had of Fett’s wide, fear-struck eyes as warm, orange light enveloped him for a moment. Fear for  _ their _ safety.

Why didn’t he wait? Why didn’t  _ Din _ insist? Again, regret buries him whole.

He’s glad he didn’t tell Cara what happened between him and Fett. There would have been judgement for sure, in some way, because what fool in this world falls in love when on such an important mission as he is? And that’s what happened, after all. He fell in love. He was falling in love for a good time, and then he found himself falling differently, with the promise of jagged rocks waiting for him at the bottom.

He trails his fingers over the mythosaur symbol inked on the left pauldron of Boba Fett’s armour, then places it on the floor, next to the other one. There’s only the helmet left to clean.

Whoever Boba Fett really is, however much of what Din saw was his real self, he deserves far more genuine love than this pathetic excuse of infatuation that Din can offer that let Din turn on him without a second thought.

This is something he needs to settle with his heart and with his mind. Find a compromise that would not bring any more pain to any of the parties involved.

The chance that Boba Fett poses a threat to them still exists. Din won’t let himself forget it.

He can’t get a hold of the man, but what he  _ can _ do is do his research separately. Greef Karga should know how to help him in this regard. There are questions he wants answered, and if the fates allow it, there is an apology he must make, if he is to ever sleep again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's like three hundred em dashes in this chapter. Added one just now instead of deleting some of them. I'm living my best life.
> 
> So uh.. energy states. We're entering the final arc of this story. Everything's all about the second law of thermodynamics and entropy now.
> 
> Din in this chapter: crashes at his friends' place, does nothing for a week, puts himself back together, strengthens his bond with Grogu 🌻🌷🌼🌷🌻🌹  
> Boba in the meantime:  
> ...actually you're all going to find out next week. hehe
> 
> I was going to say something else here but I forgot. Anyway, Uncle Greef Supremacy!! 💕💖💖💕💕
> 
> edit: I remember. I keep talking about Boba & the Empire and there's gonna be more of that in the next chapter. So uhh.. anyone interested in some DarthFett? I got a [short and angsty one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28882389) and a [longer and humorous (?) one!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29314974)


	15. The Doors Barred Behind Us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: suicidal ideation. I...'m not sure how graphic it is. It's implied a bit, and then... more heavily. Not terribly explicit. Reckless behaviour and disregard of one's life and safety. Standard Boba Fett chapter.
> 
> This is enormous. Take your time. It even has an opening quote. Help

_ "Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him—he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory." _

― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

The Mother of Relics’ luxury-turned-fortress yacht hosts an impressive collection of hidden nooks and crannies full of valuables. From simple trinkets and tools like spare combs, needles, and pocket bacta sprays, to more elaborate treasures like entire collections of rings and pendants stored away in bland boxes, indistinguishable except to the eye of their original owner, the ship could veritably double as the hoard of a Krayt dragon.

With their destination locked in and no need to make any more stops along the way, Boba and Ada keep themselves entertained by rummaging through the ship and each gathering their own pile of baubles, in an unofficial race to find the metaphorical pearl of the dragon first.

Ada holds everything she finds up for inspection, and Boba is tasked with appraising the stuff, since he has the most experience with credits between the two of them. There’s obviously some bias involved, as he doesn’t quite give her their full prices just to see her scrambling to find more things, but it works out in the end. A good part of the journey passes in this manner—it could be fun, except what waits for them at their destination sours Boba’s mood just by thinking about it, so he is rather running on autopilot during all this.

Eventually, they reach a stalemate in their competition when Boba uncovers an impressive safe behind a panel, well out of view, crammed in between the space between the kitchen area and the storage area of the ship at the back.

"I wonder what’s in here," he says, gesturing to the duros to come closer. "I’m not risking triggering a booby trap."

Ada, busy multitasking by also depleting Xi’n Niang’s supply of expensive snacks, wanders over with interest and glee all over her face. "Oh, I don’t know this one," she says. "I can open it, though. Definitely."

She doesn’t waste another minute. Leaving an entire chocolate-glazed biscuit stick hanging from the corner of her mouth, she wipes her hands on her trousers crassly and dives right in, looking for the control panel of the safe.

There isn’t anything better to do right now, so Boba stands by her side, watching her with mild amusement as she whoops in joy when she finds the panel, but then struggles to bypass the security codes in what can only be described as a pathetic guessing game. A soft, but disappointing grave note plays every time the combination is incorrect, much to Ada’s obvious irritation. She grabs the snack by the stick and eats it in two large bites, annoyed.

"I have an alternative," Boba says.

"What?" she snaps, turning to him sharply.

"I’m certain you could hack it eventually, but this would be more satisfying, don't you think?" He holds up a tiny, button-shaped sticky detonator.

Ada stares at him with disbelief written all over her face. "Are you crazy? We’re  _ flying _ in this ship right now!"

Boba lets the explosive fall in his palm. "Hmm… Didn’t think of that."

"You’ve lost it."

"I’m just saying. It would save us a lot of trouble."

She continues to gape at him for a minute longer, clearly too rattled to come up with a reply right away. "Listen, I could… I could overload it. You can help me with that. Please put the bomb away. I can’t tell if you’re serious or not."

Distraction successful, Ada’s frustration at the door now morphs into paranoia as she keeps watching Boba’s hands, searching them as if he’s secretly still holding onto the sticky bomb and waiting for her to turn around.

She connects two cables from the wall to the mini-vault and instructs Boba to stay by the front of the ship and turn on the air conditioner at max power at her signal. He complies, watching with fascination as the diverted power short circuits the safe. A simple solution, but with very satisfying results: the small door opens with a shower of sparks, revealing its mysteries.

Ada looks at him with triumph in her eyes, before she grabs the stuff inside greedily. The same curiosity and sense of adventure washes over Boba, carrying him to the vault in a few large, sweeping steps.

"Ha! We’re rich!" she exclaims.

"We were already rich," Boba points out. A lot of the Mother of Relics’ savings are under their control right now, after all.

"Rich _ er," _ Ada says smugly.

The vault consists of one single narrow compartment, going deep within the wall of the ship. She pulls out a long, heavy box, hands it to Boba, then pulls out several packets of credits and molten gold, which are all transferred to the table.

"There’s something at the back..." She strains to reach the item, letting out a little ‘A-ha!’ the moment she finally finds some purchase, and drags out something spherical covered inside a piece of fabric. The item inside escapes its hold and falls down to the floor, rolling away from them in a small arc, while Ada remains with the fabric in her hands.

Her excitement freezes on her face.

Boba can feel the temperature drop around them, as he too is chilled to the bone. For a second, he forgets about his troubles, about their quest, and he is aware only of the girl’s shaking hands and her mouth hanging open in shock.

"W-why did she have my…"

A Mandalorian helmet rests at the tip of Boba’s boots, bearing twin white stripes from the brows all the way to the back of the head, and a few more over the cheeks, underneath the horizontal line of the visor.

He looks at Ada warily. The poor girl is frozen, barely even blinking anymore.

"She’s dead," he says loudly—it is not a shout only because of the plea in his voice.  _ Please, don’t let this get to you now.  _ "Ada. Ada, look at me!"

"I... I…" Her voice trembles. "She… I—"

Boba takes the fabric from her hands and wraps the helmet in it, careful not to touch the beskar with his own skin. He puts it away from sight in one of the taller drawers of the kitchen, aware of the pair of red eyes following him intensely as he moves.

When he turns back, himself completely unprepared to handle such a breakdown, he finds Ada staring at him, half furious, half in despair. On the verge of falling apart.

No words come to mind. How do you comfort someone in such a moment? What could there possibly be said to help?  _ He _ knows full well how little words matter. What he wanted… what he would have wanted back then was to have someone standing by him, someone to hold him close. To simply be there. Words fade, the details fade, but not even the hottest of crucibles can melt away the memory of companionship and a burden shared.

"She used me," Ada whispers emptily. The words build up inside of her like a storm, wracking her body with shivers and sending her crashing to the floor in utter defeat. "She used me and I didn’t see it. I didn’t know. Please, believe me, I didn’t…"

Boba falls down to his knees next to her and puts an arm around her, drawing her into a hug. "I believe you," he says, even though he has no idea what she’s talking about. 

His words don’t seem to register. She sits there unresponsive, staring at the floor, tears sliding down her cheeks. A controlled sort of emptiness settles in slowly as realization dawns on her—one which never leads anywhere good. Boba keeps his hands tight on her shoulders, so that she does not forget his presence. So that she, unlike him, does not lose herself to loneliness and pain.

How many more times will this child have to suffer?

"Please, believe me," Ada repeats. "I never meant for all of this to happen."

"I believe you."

"I—I had to get out, but I didn’t… I didn’t think she was… I knew she was bad, but not—

_ "—Ada," _ Boba stresses her name, giving her shoulders a gentle shake, "calm down. You’re not making any sense. You didn’t mean for what to happen?"

She falls still and quiet. Her eyes keep darting to him, then down at the floor, then back to him as she visibly struggles to speak and find her words. Whatever it is that is plaguing her, it feels like an obstacle that is impossible to cross. Boba doesn’t know whether to ask for details or leave her be, so they end up staring at each other tensely, in varying degrees of discomfort. 

"Can I stay here a while longer?" she asks.

"Stay?" Here on the floor or… Did Boba do something to imply he wants her to leave?

"I’ll be useful, I promise." She sniffs one final time, then squares her shoulders and leans away from him. "I got this. I’m fine."

"Ada…"

"We’re about one sector away, aren’t we?" She stands and walks to the front of the ship, doing a poor job of pretending to be interested in the mission. The computer screen next to the co-pilot’s seat is turned on and displaying their nav route, which she checks on very intently.

Boba doesn’t comment on it.

He shouldn’t let this hang in the air like it is, unresolved, but he doesn’t know how to approach her.

The entire way to their destination, tension rises, and falls, and morphs from Ada’s grievous experience into the promise of a turbulent experience in the Collector’s lair.

In orbit, before the ship begins its descent, Boba hesitates to bring up the subject of the Collector. It would inevitably move the conversation back to that pantoran, which he doesn’t even want to  _ think _ about in this moment, but any extra intel is too precious to pass up. Ada should be aware enough of this line of work to understand that he isn’t asking out of cruelty.

She doesn’t seem too phased when the question is finally voiced. Sad, or maybe tired, but when haven’t they been feeling like this lately?

"I know a little. I know he exists," says Ada. "I’ve never met him, but both the weapon smuggler and her wife had a lot of dealings with him. He was part of the Trade Federation in the past."

So many relics of the past, wherever he turns.

"Now he’s at the top of the chain. He supplies Imps too. I think he still has a lot of allies, perhaps even some sway over the New Republic officials stationed out here."

Well, that sounds less than good. Wouldn’t be the first time Boba went headfirst into such a dangerous job though, so a click of the mouth and a slight shake of the head are all the new information elicits from him as he directs the ship to land.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Ada mutters.

Looking out the window is almost enough to shake Boba’s confidence too—Imperial freighters in the air, Imperial cruisers docked, the stark white stormtrooper armour shining from ground-level, where many dots are milling about, weapons at the ready. It brings a headache to his temples, and a strange pit opens in his stomach—a bit like nervosity, but also a bit like the knowledge that he may not come back from this mission alive.

"Mr Fett, we can’t do this," she says. "They’re too many."

"We’ve come this far, kid. I’m going in. You’ll be safe here."

"But you—"

"You know how to fly this ship, don’t you?"

Ada averts her eyes at once.

"Well? Do you?" Boba insists.

"Yes."

"Good. If anything happens, you take it and go," Boba instructs. "I have to do this."

"It’s too dangerous!"

He turns to her gruffly as he readjusts the clasps of his blaster-proof vest. A sorry excuse for armour compared to his own, but he has said goodbye to that one. He’s not worthy of wearing that armour again. This one barely even fits him, but between an outfit that restricts his movements and going in without any sort of shielding whatsoever, he’d rather chance the first option. Beyond the size issue, the material it is made of is decent quality.

Ada flits by his side, a bundle of nerves now that the ship has touched down on solid ground. The reality of their mission seems to have finally sunk in for her.

"You can’t go in there by yourself."

"Yes, I can and I will," he argues back, plain and simple. "If it’s just me, I will slip by undetected. I can watch my back better than anyone would. Can I trust you to do your part?"

The remark annoys her; she draws her shoulders back, makes herself appear bigger and taller. "Of course you can. That doesn’t mean—"

"Who do you want to call, Ada?" The words come out harsh and angry, angrier than she deserves to hear. Fists clenched at his sides, Boba swivels away from her and goes to grab some guns from Xi’n Niang’s gear locker. As he goes, he spits more to himself than to her, "We’re alone. We’re fucking alone. I don’t need anyone."

That finally puts an end to her criticism. She comes to the back of the ship with him, picks out a tiny button-shaped device from one of the small drawers of the locker, and hands it to him.

"You’ll be undetected by scanners," she explains morosely. "It also automatically scans your surroundings and gives you a mock-up of the place. It’s… reliable, as a last resort."

While he finishes gearing up, Ada remains by the locker, staring at the weapons hanging on the wall with an unreadable expression on her face. Then, without another word, she returns to the cockpit and sits on the co-pilot’s seat, effectively tuning out of their conversation.

"No voice unless I talk first," he says.

Ada nods absently and keeps on typing at the computer.

The clacking of the keyboard is the last sound Boba hears when he exits the ship.

***

Wearing the jamming device on the inside of his vest makes Boba’s journey through the city relatively uneventful. It’s a strange mix of civilization and imperialism, with some parts looking like any other modern city in the Outer Rim, full of tall residential blocks, shopping stalls, and vehicles roaming the streets, while other parts lose the creativity of the architecture, and lean toward the cold, lifeless husks the Empire used for barracks and warehouses in the past.

The Imperial ships they saw from orbit are mostly confluating at the eastern edge of the city, where there is a large landing area set up, and where the brutalist buildings dominate the landscape.

Boba’s tracker takes him North, perhaps a bit North-West, so he keeps clear of the stormtroopers for most of the way. Many, many missions in the past have taken him into dangerous territories, be they Rebel-infested areas, or environmentally deathly planets, or even hostile Hutt-space when the slugs started undermining each other and passing him between them like a thermal detonator about to explode. This is a feeling he knows well: the tension, the responsibility bearing down on his shoulders. He knows how to compartmentalize it, how to keep a level head while he’s right in the middle of enemy territory, and though it’s been a while since the threat has been this big, he falls back easily on his old habits.

The crowd on the streets is average, the sort you’d find anywhere in the Outer Rim: mismatched alien species, humans, the odd stormtrooper on leave, showing a hint of their humanity as they walk helmetless, stopping to buy street food like any ordinary person. Most of the noise comes from the traffic, which also brings forth clouds of smoke and toxic fumes when a particularly heavy transport vehicle passes by.

Keeping himself away from populated areas, head covered in a shawl, he feels rather safe like this. Briefly, he remembers Dengar’s bandaged head, and the memory brings a tiny smile to his face—there’s certainly something about having his ears covered by soft fabrics. Different than wearing a helmet, though. Nothing in front of the eyes.

Like this, he is withdrawn, but he sees everything unfiltered.

The Collector has been a figure of almost intangible property, hanging over their heads since the beginning. On Tatooine, Boba heard vague rumours about this individual. Mostly, he knew Slave-I had been taken to the Beiji system first, and then the trail rapidly grew cold, but travelling there with Din let him find a way forward despite the amount of time passing between the ship’s disappearance and his decision to act. He spent far too long in the desert, as thinly spread as his shadow, split in two by the binary sun. 

He expected from the start that this job would intersect with the Empire—the big pylons associated with Vader should all be thriving, now that their power is within their grasp unaltered, and that there is no threat of death from the Dark Lord were they to disobey. The passing of the Empire opened plenty of doors to those it used to keep under relative control, even in the Outer Rim.

Thinking of Darth Vader as gone sits wrong with Boba. More than a decade he’d served him, and quite enthusiastically at times. No matter his personal opinion of the Emperor’s right hand, what is a fact is that Darth Vader had too strong a presence to allow the idea of death. You would see him and his endless amount of power and you would unconsciously accept that this dark shadow was here to stay, and here to rule for as long as he willed it so.

How could he have been defeated by the Rebels, scattered and few as they were?

Could it be the Skywalker that Boba hunted down was the one to defeat the Dark Lord?

Skywalker.

Like that other one Boba saw as a child, a young reckless man commanding his own legion of troopers. Troopers— _ clones, _ he reminds himself—who betrayed their own, killed their own, and turned to the Empire. 

In Boba’s haste to separate himself from them, he too ended up serving the Empire.

Perhaps not so different from the rest, after all.

He tries to dispel these thoughts from his head, frustrated with himself. Chasing down these things, especially while deep within Imperial-infested waters, can never bring anything good.

He pings Ada through their private channel. No words, just a tiny check-in to keep her alert. To make sure their channel is active still.

_ ‘trouble?’ _ she signals back.

_ ‘no’ _

She must have eyes on him from her computer and know where he is right now, past the city center, and less than a klik away from the Collector’s coordinates. It brings a tiny bit of relief to think it—that she’s watching his back through the satellites. As much as he wants to deny it, it puts his heart at ease to know there is someone keeping an eye out for him.

The coordinates lead him to a large and imposing building, made of marble and stone, and decorated with columns and intricate bas-reliefs on the frontispiece. Only the Imperial headquarters must be more intimidating than this structure, but that one is constructed upon fear, whereas these bricks weigh down on the ground with age, beauty, and history. No doubt this is a relic from the past population of this planet, perhaps long gone since the Empire invaded it.

He waits for the changing of the guards, around twilight, when the sun rays offer him the last bit of warmth of the day, before darkness starts to fall. He has no idea what he’ll find inside, but he’s got everything ready: guns, explosives, rope, stim canisters.

The plan is simple: get in, locate Slave-I, blast his way out.

Of course, should the ship be non-functional, then he will have to sneak out undetected and figure out another course of action.

If he can’t get out, well… If there is anybody to miss him, they are all of them fools.

Ada should be able to make it out of here in one piece if she listens to him. She knows how to pilot the ship by herself now, and there’s enough credits and food there to last her some time while she figures out what she wants to do next. 

Really, there’s no reason Boba shouldn’t be going in right this moment and getting back his ship. None at all.

He catches one of the new guards unaware and chokes him until the man crumples unconscious to the ground. There’s some bushes decorating the side of the building, where he dumps the guard’s body, then sneaks inside through a side-entrance before he is detected by anybody else.

It’s a museum of sorts, filled with items encased in pristine crystal panels. From the maintenance area he ends up in a secondary wing, some room full of medals—on tables and on the walls, carefully arranged by era, and accompanied by descriptive panels.

Everything is bathed in dim red light from the security lights placed on the walls. Boba’s shadow is long and wild as he crosses the chamber.

"Welcome to the Medals of the Separatist Era Exhibit."

His heart stops, lodged in his throat.

It’s a pre-recorded line, playing from the ceiling. It continues pleasantly, introducing the layout of the area and giving the guests a couple of instructions on how to approach the exhibits. Boba makes himself one with a dark corner, crouching low between the solid, wooden half of two vitrines.

_ ‘motion sensors still up,’ _ he types to Ada.

_ ‘cams r off,’ _ says Ada shortly afterward.  _ ‘can’t remotely reroute infobot.’ _

Great.

Boba,  _ ‘guards?’ _

Instead of words, Ada pings him with the location of the nearest heat signatures. A mini holo-map pops up from the commlink attached to his forearm, showing him vague blueprints and scattered points of light where the guards must be patrolling. Two of them are heading in his direction at a brisk pace.

_ Great. _

He remains hidden there and listens.

Soon, two sets of footsteps round around the corner outside and stop by the entrance to the Medal Exhibit. The AI speaks again, greeting them warmly.

"Rak, if you’re slacking off again I will have to report it this time," says one of the guards. "There’s only so much I can overlook."

"Rak! Get your ass back here and do your job!" shouts the other. The large halls carry his voice loudly.

"Welcome to the Medals of the Separatist Era Exhibit."

"Blasted bot," curses the second guard, "and blasted newbies. I’m not paid enough to cover everyone’s asses."

"Tsk, just turn it off yourself. I’ll be very unforgiving in my report tonight," says the first guard. "I’m tired of hearing this stupid bot’s voice.  _ Welcome to the— _ just shut up, already."

There’s more hustling from the other room, then the two guards depart. Boba spies on them through the holomap, waiting until their business in the area is done before he makes any move. The two stop by the side of a wall on a nearby corridor and linger there for a minute—perhaps a control panel of sorts?

Heart in his throat but without any choice except to get going, he enters the next segment of the Exhibit.

No sound greets him from the ceiling.

_ ‘all good,’ _ he tells Ada.

_ ‘that was quick’ _

_ ‘just lucky’ _

Unfortunately, the luck doesn’t last forever.

The Museum is grander on the inside than it is on the outside. The neighbouring gloom on the street washes over the building and casts it into a strange, sad light, but inside, even with the place closed off for the day, the richness of it, both in terms of the literal credits invested here and that of the cultural worth of the items on display, Boba feels like he is trampling all over it simply by passing through its hallways like a spectre. Tainting it with his poor, uncultured presence alone.

He sees many things. Most of them do not phase him at all, like collections of weapons from ages past, or the hint of weird contraptions used during the Clone Wars to transport goods.

It’s difficult to pinpoint what sort of Museum this is, as it contains elements from all sorts of areas, but it brushes upon artillery and ships as well, and that is all that Boba is interested in.

He follows a path that wounds around the side of the building, avoiding the central lobby as much as he can. For the most part, the guards aren’t a problem, as they are not terribly invested in their job, it is late, and Boba is good enough to be silent when it matters.

With nothing more to go on than the location of the entire Museum, he has to take it by foot and check the rooms one by one, the entire time wondering what would be worse—to find only the Collection, without the figure behind it, or to find the Collector himself, but no ship?

As big as the Museum is, it is not enough to display starcrafts of any sort, and Slave-I is big enough that it would require an immense hall.

_ ‘nothing outside, was there?’ _

Ada takes a minute to reply. During that minute, Boba stops and stares, eyes wide, body rapidly filling with discomfort, at an array of clone trooper armour sets, lining a corridor from one end to the other, all various types, standard or specialized, preserved in pristine condition. He can’t walk too fast in fear of alerting the guards, so he forces himself to keep a moderate pace as he passes them by.

_ ‘no ships,’ _ says Ada. Clever—doesn’t even need him to spell it out for her to figure out what he’s looking for. This isn’t good news, though.

Either it’s not here or… it was made to fit.

Boba’s pessimistic about many things, but they’re all usually in regard to himself. When it comes to missions, he sees the facts for what they are, no emotions attached. This is how it is, this is how to deal with it.

Few missions before have had a part of himself involved so intricately within them.

Dread grows in his chest the more he advances. How much longer can he keep going like this? How much longer can he allow himself the smallest of hopes, and then see that bit of light extinguished by the faintest gusts of wind?

Past the Clone Wars, past the Separatist field devices, past the remnant Republican uniforms still stained with the blood of their owners, still sporting the entry points of the blasters that killed them, Boba ends up in front of two large doors, at least triple his height, leading to a hall entitled ‘Bounty Hunters of the Outer Rim.’

He stops. Stares. Takes one deep breath and pushes the doors open.

The hall is made up of one single chamber, impressive in size, with a heavily adorned ceiling full of crystals shining dimly in the night-light. He takes the flashlight from his belt and turns it on, anxious about what he is going to see.

In the middle of the hall lies a replica of Slave-I. 

It almost seems to call to him, so quickly his eyes settle on its familiar shape. He walks toward it at once, not sparing a single glance at the other things scattered about.

The ship is about four meters tall, four meters long, and propped up at an angle, so that the underside is visible to the museum guests as well. Next to it stands a simple plaque, reading,

_ ‘Scale: 1/5. Accurate durasteel replica of Slave-I, ship of bounty hunter Jango Fett, later used by the notorious Boba Fett. Retrieved from Tatooine, 5 ABY. Manufacturing date: unknown, pre-40 BBY.’ _

He keeps reading the plaque next to the ship, heart thudding in his ears and mouth too dry to form any words. It goes into great detail, starting simple with the ship model, then going over the mods, the weapons—everything. The sort of knowledge you couldn’t get unless you grew up with it, or if you personally took it apart. 

There is something else in the darkness. He flashes the light behind the replica and steps around it in a daze, trying to get a better look at the large piece of metal hiding there.

Boba walks all the way around it, not quite seeing what it is until it hits him all at once.

_ ‘The original left wing of Slave-I,’ _ says the plaque.

Is this what they amount to? A cold piece of metal to be displayed by the rich, for the rich, like a trophy? Is this what he wants his legacy to be? Is this the result of years of pain, and sweat, and grief?

Next to the plaque is a small stand bearing a tiny interactive screen and a handful of buttons. Thoughtlessly, Boba presses the first one and waits.

A large hologram erupts from the screen, angled to the side of the replica, lighting up the entire hall. It is Slave-I, down to the very last detail, shown in slow motion as it reconfigures when it lifts into the air.

He presses the second button.

The hologram changes to a sagittal section of the ship going right through its middle, revealing the inner mechanism and rotation of Slave-I as the hologram depicts the same movement as before.

Nausea builds up at the back of his throat. Not violently. It is an afterthought.

The violence is in his clenched fist already, breaking the device apart.

As the light from the hologram is whisked away, a high-pitched alarm replaces it, blaring overhead in repetitive bursts.

There’s a migraine forming at his temples already.

"Intruder!" shouts a guard, their muffled voice reaching Boba through the walls and corridors.

"Intruder!"

The word is carried like a game from guard to guard, echoing around the hall from all sides. Boba studies the little heat signatures grouping up and heading toward him and can only find it in himself to stare blankly at the oncoming enemies. Unfeeling.

When the guards’ footsteps are close enough that he can tell them apart, he takes out a thermal detonator and a blaster, and holds each in one hand. He waits, counting down the seconds, then throws the detonator toward the door he entered through.

The whole wall on that side of the hall crumbles to pieces, taking with it display cases, and armour, and weapons, and also part of the guards, who fall to the floor, lifeless.

Boba doesn’t stick around to check on them. From the opposite entrance, the growing clamour alerts him of more enemies, among which he detects the foreboding sound of groaning metal.

He shoots down as many of them as he can, taking cover behind Slave-I’s solitary wing. The door creates a good choke point, letting him snipe them down from safety. Unfortunately, they are decently trained and stop trickling in. One of the guards throws a tiny capsule inside, which erupts into thick smoke as soon as it makes contact with the floor.

Through the smoke, he catches sight of a sentry droid, of average height but looking quite unrelenting. It steps inside, keeping a brisk pace as it heads straight toward him. He aims at its shoulder joints, weakening its grip on its weapon, but the droid continues its advance. There are many ways to injure and maim, after all.

With his eyes watering from the smoke, Boba has a harder time keeping track of it than usual. He holds up well, though he doesn’t exit the place unscathed.

Pain flares on his left arm, right above the elbow, where the sentry droid’s blade tore through the fabric of his suit and slashed through the meat of his arm. He moves quickly, avoiding a second stab to the chest, at the same time aiming his blaster at the droid. It takes three shots to the neck before the metal gives way in a shower of sparks.

It doesn’t stop the droid fully.

In the mere seconds he has left, Boba braces himself, unholsters a second blaster, and charges on ahead toward the door. Behind him, he hears the robotized weapon following him, its footsteps falling heavily on the floor, the sound of its pistons barely keeping up with its mass at this speed.

They both burst through the door in rapid succession. Boba locates the nearest guard and hauls them in front of him, using them as a shield.

He’s too deep inside the building to make it back outside in one piece with so many people after him. He spares a glance at the map, hoping to see a secret escape route lightening up, but all there is is the maze of corridors and rooms and outdated paraphernalia that he would very much like to set fire to right this instant.

A blaster shot catches him in the leg, barely a graze, but enough to put a stumble into his next step and send him crashing into a vitrine. He hisses in pain and stands quickly, already aiming at the assailants behind him. He takes down two guards, and shoots the droid in the knee, damaging it further, but it still doesn’t stop.

He sees an elevator up ahead and makes a run for it. Doesn’t matter where it’s going, as long as it can put some distance between them.

*****

It’s cold on Madame’s ship. It’s also unnerving to be here by herself.

Shortly after Mister Fett departs, Ada gets her travel cloak, drawing the strings around the collar tightly over her shoulders, then returns to her seat. 

She’s taken down all security cameras and cut off all connections to the outside, to Rhea Dunn, yet she is paranoid, the back of her neck prickling uncomfortably whenever she sits at the computer, with the expanse of the yacht behind her. 

The ghost of her last caretaker lingers on. Effortlessly, she can imagine the pantoran walking toward the kitchen cabinet to fill a glass of wine for herself, and bring something for Ada too, depending on her mood, or sitting down on the sofa lazily, enjoying the spoils of another successful trade.

For a year and a half they’ve been collaborating—if it can be called that—and Ada has seen…  enough during all this time. Not enough of the world, but enough of its criminals: all flavours of dwellers from the underworld passed through the pantoran’s halls, from simple thieves to the rich pylons of villainy in the Outer Rim. The sensation that this life will never let her go, despite her involvement as mostly a witness (except… except  _ that _ one time…), it keeps her on edge, as if her hands are bloodier than they are in reality.

(And they are already so bloody.)

Her Mandalorian helmet is out of sight, pushed inside one of the drawers in the kitchen. The door is locked, but the key is on the table by the sofa. It’s not there to be kept away from her reach. It’s there so that she may stop thinking about it for one minute and focus properly on helping out Mister Fett, instead of turning around like a startled animal and burning holes into the door of the drawer.

What a disappointment, to find her helmet here.  _ Here. _

Xi’n Niang, the Mother of Relics, the Bride, who lied to her and gave her no choice but to trust her, while Xi’n Niang never cared enough about Ada to even offer her real name. How pitiful, to be aware of this imbalance, but to turn a blind eye to it all, if only because mourning the loss of her own mother made it easy to latch onto a replacement, and still to believe it couldn’t be  _ that _ bad, could it? This pantoran couldn’t possibly let any harm come to her, if Ada employed her skills with technology and Mandalorian knowledge to help Madame however she wished, could she? To finally see it all for what it really was: manipulation. Premeditated, even, and that is the thought that would easily bring Ada to her knees again were she standing instead of sitting down.

The cruel insidiousness and two-facedness of it all breaks her heart. There was barely anything left of it before. Now…?

Now what little remains of her heart mourns all the choices she has made until this point, and she mourns the choices Mister Fett has made that have only dug the hole under his feet deeper.

She doesn’t like the way Mister Fett looked right before he left. It was like looking into a mirror, when they made eye contact for a second—and though she was angry at him, the emotion didn’t cloud her vision enough to hide how familiar it felt. The disturbing acceptance of heading out into such a situation by himself… It’s something she would have done months ago, before the Madame gave her a purpose.

Now that’s another can of worms that’s on the verge of sending her way down. 

_ One breakdown at a time, _ she tells herself firmly.

She’s nobody, really. Not a good fighter, not a trustworthy clan member by far, not someone who could fend for herself if she had no support at all. She’s good with computers, but there’s a limit even to them, and she can’t save Mister Fett by diverting security cameras or unlocking blast doors.

This recurring theme of betrayal—of whatever flavour and validity—it must be some sort of cosmic joke, to follow her around like this.

What happened? What lies and what trust was broken between these men? Right when she thought the Mandalorian could almost help her move on, he lashed out at them. At Mister Fett.

Boba Fett. 

Of all the people in the world, how could she end up travelling with this famous bounty hunter? 

And yet, that is easier to accept than the multitude of ways she has found kinship in his presence.

Just what the hell has she got herself into?

No matter.

She’s got herself into this, so there’s nothing to do now except walk forward. She has been extremely wrong before about many things, has trusted people she was not supposed to. If there’s anyone still alive from her clan, they would not welcome her back for sure. Being alone is easy to bear when it could be penance for her tresspasses, but knowing that it has little chance of changing in the future? That’s heartbreaking.

Mister Fett won’t keep up with her for much longer, but she has to do her part in this, at least to make sure they both reach the end in one piece.

If he wants to play the unreasonable bastard card, then Ada can play the unruly teenageer card right back at him. It’s their business, not hers, but if they won’t fix their problems by themselves, then she will take direct action.

She inputs the comm code for the Razor Crest and waits. The distance between this planet and wherever Mando is might be too great for the ships to establish a link, even for a vessel as modern as this , but Ada has no idea what else she could do. It’s worth a try.

With an eye on the radar, showing her Mister Fett’s slow advance toward the target’s location, and the other on the commlink, she sits there on the chair, back hunched with worry, fingers drumming on the edge of the computer keyboard rhythmically.

The commlink spurs to life with a clear, short chime, alerting her of a secure connection. Not an active comm, but one she could leave a message on.

"Mister? It’s—It’s the duros, from the… I’m with…" 

Her throat is dry. The words seem to get stuck on her tongue, as if she’s swallowed cotton and can’t fully articulate a single sound. 

Is this a mistake, after all?

"Please, help," she cries. She has to spit the words to get them past the stone lodged in her throat. "We found the target, but there’s a lot of Imps here. Mister Fett went in alone. I’m afraid. Please. He’s alone."

Her heart thuds in her chest like a drum, almost shaking her whole. 

She ends the message and waits for a reply, but nothing happens for a long time. 

The scanner syncs up with her computer automatically. It refreshes every couple of seconds, showing her the rough placement of walls and entrances in the museum as Mister Fett delves deeper. It’s difficult to give any sort of direction using it, as this method is best used with the barest idea of what the actual blueprints look like in mind, however, it lets both her and Mister Fett be aware of potential threats lurking beyond a wall or a doorway.

She keeps tabs on his tracker, while trying (and failing) to access more of the museum’s database in the meantime. There are layers upon layers of security, most of them very cleverly designed to be manually operated only. In this age of technology, perhaps one way to circumvent hackers is to return back to the past. 

From one moment to the next, the guards on the map duplicate in number. The little dots of light all start moving frantically toward a central spot, where Mister Fett’s tracker stays motionless, in one place.

It takes a few seconds for the change to register, but once it does, she gasps in shock and zooms out on the map, hoping to gauge the situation better.

Clearly, something has happened in one of the chambers.

Unable to do anything beside bear witness, she watches the screen anxiously, following Mister Fett’s path intently. There’s no easy escape route in sight; she pings him with a few variants, her fingers flying over the keyboard faster than ever before, but she realizes the hopelessness of the situation too.

Mister Fett’s tracker stops by a wall. He’s surrounded.

Suddenly, all the lights on the map flicker, then vanish.

"Mister Fett?"

The comm channel is full of static. It was a weak connection to begin with, but the complete lack of response disturbs her. With what thoughts are swimming in her head right now, the simple presence of an active commlink would do wonders, yet she is wholly alone.

She tries to adjust the frequency, and when that fails, she tinkers with the app on the computer, but nothing works.

"Mister Fett!" she says again, louder, as if the volume of her voice alone could fix this problem.

‘You know how to fly this ship,’ he told her hours ago. The words come back to her mind sharply, chilling her to the bone. This isn’t how this mission is supposed to go. At the same time, it’s exactly how she expected it to go.

The static fizzles in and out for a few seconds. Ada reaches for the button instantly, and pleads, "Say something! Are you there?"

"...for now," says Mister Fett, most of his words unintelligible.

"Are you safe?"

"Take… if I don’t make it." He groans loudly in pain, the sound dissolving into white noise.

Ada swallows; both her hands shake on the keyboard.

"I—"

The transmission cuts off entirely.

"Mister Fett?" Ada’s voice trembles. She turns back with a gasp, keeping the drawer in her sight with a touch of desperation. Her helmet is fitted with high-tech audio amplifiers. She was never good at fighting, but she was good at spying and at handling comms. Her helmet would be good enough to bypass the jammers put in place inside that building, to reach him wherever he vanished to so suddenly. It’s quite literally made for this, except… except to use it she would have to put it back on.

"Boba Fett!" she shrieks in the mic, to no avail. If he’s hurt, what then? What if he’s hurt too badly to make it out of there? Ada can’t possibly get him out by herself. She lacks the physical strength, let alone the strategy and the skills to infiltrate such a building  _ and _ make it back out alive. 

The prospect of losing another mentor figure in so little time keeps her in one piece as she transverses the yacht, all the way to the leisure area. She picks up the key from the table with a whimper and a numb hand—the tiny metal item doesn’t even register on her skin, so out of it she feels. Despite that, she slots the key inside the lock on the first try with pinpoint precision. Whatever parts of her got cut off in her string of grief and angst, they’ve shaped her into a clinical mind when the need arises.

This is bigger than her. She has to do it.

*****

"Do you hear me? Go. I don’t think I’ll make it."

Boba rests his head back against the wall of the elevator and stares off ahead of him. Crashing the final bit in that claustrophobic space left him aching and miserable. He cut the cables at the last possible moment, before the elevator could be forced back up, but the impact still jarred him enough that he postpones standing up for a while.

"Ada?"

The commlink is entirely silent. He takes the earpiece out and adjusts its settings, then tries to contact the duros again, but the connection cannot be reestablished.

Hopefully she received his message.

This far down, Boba isn’t sure where he is anymore. 

At first, he thinks he’s in a cellar, about to face a dead-end and consequently wait to be forced out by the guards, except the more he advances, the longer the chamber becomes, like a wide, underground tunnel full of memorabilia put away for storage. The middle of the tunnel is cleared for small, low-energy transport vehicles, one of which Boba sees powered down right at the entrance to it.

A few lights are on stand-by mode, trailing off ahead into the darkness in a straight line, little wisps that reveal the length of it more than provide proper illumination.

Swallowing down his anxiety, he goes forward. He uses his flashlight to light the way better, pointing it left and right as he walks by the mounds of stuff kept in the tunnel. Beside the items stored outside, he notices small chambers built into its sides like the tiny legs of a caterpillar, housing various trinkets of high historical value.

Strange jewelry reflects the light back at him, and bejewelled crowns and tiaras, and even richly decorated outfits put on display on humanoid mannequins sparkle glamorously as he passes them by.

The tunnel branches off midway. It’s hard to say how long it has been, as it feels like he’s barely made any progress. 

The oppressive darkness around him plays tricks on his senses—what he thinks are droid eyes following him are in fact gemstones.

Gemstones, gemstones, right until he smacks into the body of a B2-battle droid. His heart lodges in his throat. Steel nerves, courtesy of working for Vader, are all that keep him from shooting the entire clip into the metal and alerting security of his presence.

The droid is inactive.

Several more stand still, cold, empty, lined up along the wall. Upon closer inspection, he notices a thin transparent sheet fully covering their bodies to protect them from outside hazards.

Boba laughs to himself nervously, nerves too frayed to keep calm anymore.

"Intruder detected."

He freezes.

Another one.

"Surrender," says the droid, "or you will be killed."

Boba exhales heavily.  _ Can’t catch a break in this world. _

He scans the tunnel and spots the two beady optical lenses of the droid, several meters away from him, standing against the opposite wall of the tunnel. This one seems to be some variation of commando droid, probably heavily modded to guard these precious items.

Boba has no qualms about destroying the stuff lying around. He throws a thermal detonator in the direction of the droid, then takes off toward the darkness blindly. His flashlight fades in and out, probably rattled by the impact of the elevator, showing him the way ahead in periodic bursts.

Commando droids are, unfortunately, built with agility and stealth in mind. The detonator goes off behind him, sending him forward with one powerful blast, but as soon as he hits the ground, his flashlight turns on momentarily, showing him the ruthless machine gaining on him.

They wrestle with one another on the floor, Boba mostly doing his best to avoid getting stabbed to death through his ill-fitting armour. 

"Surrender. Final warning," the droid says.

It happens very fast, as all such fights happen, but he gains the upper hand and rams his gun underneath the droid’s chest, shooting it until his weapon overheats.

The droid makes several garbled noises, the syllables dissipating into static as the blaster damages its central operating core. "...will not… scape…" it says stiltedly.

The light behind its optic lenses dims down severely and flickers every couple of seconds.

One of its hands shots out and grabs Boba’s wrist tightly, dragging him forward and twisting it as the droid moves to stand. How is it still able to move?!

Boba struggles in its hold violently, grunting through the searing pain in his limb, and sends them careening into one of the walls. The droid is just as unstable on its feet as he is, except much less hindered by its injuries. With the mechanisms in its hand straining under the pressure, it crowds Boba toward one of the side-chambers, where they fall over the floor in a tangle of organic and metallic limbs.

The blast door closes behind them loudly. The moment it hits the floor, the noise rings out harshly in the tunnel, so stark that Boba fears the entire imperial presence has been alerted by it.

It’s pitch black inside, save for the flickering eyes of the droid, like a macabre imitation of artificial satellites passing over the night sky. For a second, he is transported back to Tatooine, to the endless nights he spent alone in the desert, staring up at the sky.

"Intrrr… neutrrrralized," the droid croaks.

Boba shoots it once more—his most reckless shot in the dark.

It sputters for a few moments, then falls over his legs heavily, pinning him to the floor.

The fight leaves him all at once. As he regains his breath and battles the pain-induced haze creeping on the fringe of his awareness, Boba takes out the flashlight again and sweeps the room in one shaky arc.

Several clone armour sets are assembled in the chamber, indistinguishable among each other. Plain white. More boxes and crates to one side promise more Clone Wars memorabilia.

Bile rises in his throat at the sight. He turns the flashlight off at once, if only to stop seeing that stark white reflected back at him so intently.

_ Fuck this place. _

It barely takes half a minute for the noise to appear. A sizzling that Boba’s breathing covers initially, but which grows louder and is soon accompanied by a pungent smell.

It burns all the way to his lungs, sending him into a coughing fit.

He grabs his nose and mouth with one hand as he coughs. With the other he fiddles with the flashlight, angling it at the droid. Some sort of semi-opaque gas is pouring out of a tiny opening by the side of its chestplate.

The flashlight slips from his fingers.

Under the weight of the droid, his body feels more like a human-shaped bruise than anything else. He can’t reach the door from where he’s sitting, and he can’t muster the strength to push the droid off of him either.

The hissing is very loud now. The gas brings a heaviness to the air that he feels on his skin, like the soft caress of poison, asking to be let in.

He can’t open the door like this. He can’t breathe already. He gasps, feels another mouthful of the stuff go down his throat.

Twisting around and looking for his flashlight, he finds it propped by the side of a crate, its light falling gently over the first clone trooper armour in line.

He reaches for the helmet desperately, extending his hand as much as his immobilized body allows him. The brief moment it takes him to get a grip on the helmet feels endless, the end—inevitable.

.

.

The plastoid shouldn’t feel familiar, but it does. He brings the helmet over his head in one single movement, and it hurts how easily it slides over his features and how well it fits him.

The poisonous gas doesn’t reach him anymore. He gasps for air, feeling the warmth of the helmet padding hugging his face close, just like his own, except—

—except—

—it’s pitch black. The visor doesn’t work. The audio amplifiers don’t work. The hissing of the gas is muffled. There is only his breath loud in his ears as he backs up blindly, hitting a crate? a box? the wall? and shakes in terror.

All his life he’s run from this.

Is it even Boba Fett wearing this helmet right now? Was there ever a Boba Fett to begin with? Who is Boba Fett? Bounty hunter. Clone. Nobody. One in a million. Not born out of any love. Not born. Set aside. For what? Why him?

It could be anyone in this room. Any of Jango Fett’s clones. Copies.

His breath comes out in short bursts. The longer he thinks of the clones, the stronger he feels his pulse racing.  _ Thud, thud, thud, _ goes his heart in his chest, hitting against his ribcage with a vengeance.  _ You’re still alive, you’re still alive, _ it’s shouting at him.  _ You’re still alive. _

_ You’re the last one standing.  _

His legs don’t cooperate in the least. He digs his fingers into the sides of his knees, rubs at the back of his calves in hope of making blood pour through the muscle, to get them to move. Pushing at the droid with his hands alone is fruitless right now.

_ Stand up. _

Terror keeps him paralyzed in place—for decades it was building in the back of his mind. An entire graveyard of repressed memories and thoughts, all coming out of the ground to haunt him now that he let himself look back at the ghosts.

It’s so easy to imagine someone just like him wearing this armour, flooded by adrenaline and fear, on the brink of death.

How many of them died unrecognized? Unknown? Without a name, without rights. Without anything to leave behind.

All alone.

The injustice of it all is crushing. Overwhelmingly heavy to bear.

How must his father have felt when he trained the first batches of these soldiers? How must he have felt, seeing his younger face everywhere around him, knowing that these numbered souls had numbered days, and all he could do was add some colour to their blank slate?

Among the thoughts, a melody resurfaces faintly, first the tune, then the vague shape of the words—he hums it to himself, desperate to catch it before it vanishes into nothingness. A precious melody, one his father taught him. Taught  _ them, all. _

Heroic, honouring their culture—he focuses on these notes until everything else fades away.

Minutes, hours—who can say how much time he’s spent there, lost in anguish? When he finally frees himself from the metal carcass, he stands on wobbly legs full of pinpricks, and he feels the heavy, insurmountable weight of his past stand with him. Not as an anchor, one that he’s been dragging behind him, unable to cut free, but as a spirit floating by itself, its presence there only to remind him of its existence.

In the pit of the earth, the comlink crackles to life.

"Mister Fett?" Ada sounds terribly young and afraid. Almost unrecognizable.

"I’m here," he whispers.

"Are you alright?"

.

.

"I will be."

He follows the rest of the catacombs blindly, holding the clone helmet underneath his arm as he searches for an exit. There are so many pieces in this museum—taking this one won’t make any difference. Makes no sense. But one,  _ one _ of them, should, he thinks, be reclaimed by the hands it was made for.

***

The ship is exactly where he left it.

He enters it slowly, even the slope of the ramp offering decent resistance to his tired body.

"Mister Fett!" Ada exclaims as soon as he steps inside. She rushes in front of him, eyes wide and growing more fearful as she takes in his battered appearance.

He stops and stares at her. "You’re still here?"

"Did you honestly think I would abandon you?"

His breath leaves him in one sorrowful exhale.

There is the name of Jango Fett, bounty hunter, whose legacy has led to this: a metal carcass in a museum, dissected for entertainment, housed underneath the same roof as countless other stolen treasures. Stripped bare of his culture, just as all that remains from the clones is their armour, not their identity.

This entire time he’s been carrying the torch for the name of Fett, but now another path appears: Jango Fett, father, patient, warm, a constant by his side when he was a child. So full of love that neither death nor time has managed to obscure it.

Perhaps this is the legacy he should carry forward. This is the one that would change the world.

The legacy of a good father.

He stares at Ada a moment longer, then smiles at her, a small smile, like a dim ray of sunlight breaking through the clouds. Her expression morphs into one of concern, which only lightens his mood further.

"I was afraid," he says, drawing her into a hug, "but I don’t think I am anymore."

Later, once his wounds are patched up, they sit at the table, both helmets resting on it in front of them. He doesn’t ask about hers. She doesn’t ask about his.

"What are you humming?" Ada asks. In her hands she holds a piece of clean fabric, twisting it this and that way absently as her eyes keep returning to her Mandalorian helmet.

"It’s a song I know from my dad," he says. "It’s called  _ Brothers, all." _

She tries to replicate the tune, but sings it entirely off-key.

"No, no, it goes like this—"

.

.

"Does it have words too?"

"Of course."

"Can you teach me?"

Boba sighs. "Alright, but I only remember a few words. It goes like this:  _ glo-ry, eter-nal glo-ry..." _

"That doesn’t flow at all," she whines.

"It sucks in Basic. What did you expect? The song is Mandalorian."

"Teach me in Mando’a, then."

He looks at her, studying her face.

"Please," Ada says, determined.

" Okay. Repeat after me. Kote—"

"Kote?"

"—darasuum kote—"

"—darasuum kote—"

"Jorso’ran, kando a tome."

"Together?" she asks.

"Yeah.  _ We shall bear its weight together."  _ He can’t help the smile that comes to his face. "Now say the words yourself."

Ada fumbles through the lines, but after a little guidance, gets them right on the third try.

"Now sing them after me."

.

.

A good hour passes like this, with song and wistfulness. More words resurface from the depths of his memory. At some point, when hunger strikes them both so acutely that they can’t ignore it any longer, they stand by the kitchenette cupboard, eating canned fruit right out of the metal tins, in too much of a rush to settle down and have proper dinner.

Boba’s been running all his life. Away from Kamino, away from Mandalore, even away from Jango Fett, when that became too hard to bear. Death should have been a mercy, but death did not come at the appointed place, at the appointed time. It wasn’t a meeting he scheduled, but after falling down the Sarlacc pit, feeling the acid and the rows of teeth cut into him, he realized it wasn’t an unwelcome one.

If anything could have taken away all the monsters he’s been hiding from, that would have been it.

The moment he stopped and accepted it, that’s when he found himself still alive, still breathing, still standing. Still hurting. Hurting more than he thought he could hurt.

His eyes keep drifting toward the clone helmet.

"Do you think there’s any paint here?" he asks her.

"Paint?" Ada looks at him very flabbergasted. "Whatever for?"

He tilts his head toward the helmet. "It’s too impersonal. None of us was a blank slate."

For several minutes, they rummage through the drawers and containers of the ship, but out of all the unnecessary trinkets Xi’n Niang has on her ship, paint is not one of them.

He ends up grabbing one of the pantoran’s sticks of rouge. The need to colour the helmet, to reclaim it is stronger than whatever the world should think. Later, if he is still alive, he will paint it proper.

Boba adds a line over the visor, and two curved ones down the cheek plates, mirroring the design of his personal helmet. The shape of this one is all wrong, a phase I armour, but with these red lines over it, it feels more like home now. A broken, old home he has to acknowledge and accept.

"I understand now," Ada speaks up all of a sudden. She has her own helmet in her hands. "Everything that happened. I understand."

"You don’t have to tell me unless you’re ready," Boba tells her quietly.

"I need to. I  _ need _ to, please. Will you listen to me?"

So, Boba nods, and he listens.

"I was with my mother outside our covert, looking for a bounty, when we were ambushed. They k—they... her, stripped her of her beskar, but they didn’t… not me. Instead, they took my helmet and my vambraces, and they left me there.

"‘A mercy,’ said one of them." Ada spits the words, face thunderous. "I was young and dumb and  _ terrified. _ I broke the Creed. I was the newest, and the worst fighter, and now I was a traitor, too. I was too afraid to face them, so I ran away.

"Remember the mercs I sent you to kill? I saw their files once, on Madame's computer. I thought it was her trying to track them down, you know? To avenge me and my mother. I was naive to think so.

"Later, some other day, I was playing with the security cameras outside the estate and I saw him—the bastard who took away my identity. He had visited Madame for a mission. He was working for her.

"I thought, that’s fine. It must be that they are simply the very best team on this planet, and Madame never accepts anything but the best. I was lying to myself, obviously. Every single time I put her into a good light in my eyes it was all a lie.

"But I couldn’t imagine her doing any wrong. She  _ picked _ me up from the street. I thought I would never be accepted back into my family. I was terrified. I was so ashamed of myself that I could have… I was ready to put an end to it all."

She falls silent for a few moments, then sighs.

"She used me to get to them. I realize it now. She set me up, so she could take me in. She reinforced my stupid, childish fears, and told me that they definitely hated me. That it was fortunate she found me in time. That she would save me from their wrath. I… I believed her.

.

"I shouldn’t have believed her, but I was just a child. I’m just a child.

.

"You know, use a thief to catch a thief? Well… same goes for using a Mando to catch a Mando. Their blood is on my hands."

Her head hangs down from the burden of it all. 

Boba watches her silently. His eyes fall down on the helmet in her hands, then further down at the one in his, and he bends forward, hunches over it, bringing a hand to his temple to shield his face from her. His eyes prickle with warmth, which slowly cools down as it slides down his cheeks.

"That blood will stay there for the rest of your life," he says hoarsely. "You can make amends. You can live with it, but it won’t go away."

"How can I live with this? I can’t live with this for the rest of my life." She’s on the edge of a sob, talking in between her heaving breaths.

"You have to."

"You can’t tell me this and walk to your death the very next moment. You’re a hypocrite."

"The things  _ I’ve _ done—"

"Is there a line? A measuring cup? One is fine, two is still redeemable, three, hmm—oh no, you have four! Too bad! No turning back?" She stands up, fists clenched by her side. The table rattles where she knocks into it in her haste. "If I have to live with this, then so do you."

"Ada…" Boba brings down his hand and looks at her directly, through the tears.

"So do you," she cries.

They stare at each other, both breathing heavily. She is wrong, but she is also right. He  _ has _ been living with it for decades, but what he did can’t really be called living. He stayed alive. He existed, in a detached sense of self. He let it lead him by the nose, let it throw him into danger, until he became numb to it all.

A little tune plays back on the computer.

It startles both of them. 

Ada lets out a tiny gasp, then runs to the screen. She doesn’t say what it is, and Boba doesn’t ask, but he does wonder what could bring a sigh of relief from her at this hour in their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I give you [vode an piano](https://youtu.be/2Is_OFY_QiI) & [vode an w lyrics,](https://youtu.be/xpff8KnBA3I) the two versions of this song that have carried me through the winter. (Check out [vode an x clones theme lo-fi](https://youtu.be/n6LgqtsLgrQ?list=PLOdlgwy7PzV3k6sMOmjvaodF4D0VeA78m) too!)
> 
> If there's any mistakes of any sort, I apologize. I don't even know my name anymore. Somehow I made it just in time before the week ended! ♥♥
> 
> Honestly I didn't think I could write a chapter that I would like more than chapter 10, the one with the kiss, but here we are. Who knows what's next?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos & comments are greatly appreciated ♥


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